


Everything's Got to Be Perfect (Bigger and Better and Best)

by Kozakura_dono



Category: Naruto
Genre: Bad Decisions, Blood and Gore, Blood and Injury, Chakra is magic, Chakra is weird, Headcanon, I haven't watched an episode of Naruto in 5 years, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Mythology References, Not Beta Read, Reincarnation, Self-Insert, Work In Progress, as in not scientific
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-09-23
Updated: 2018-11-01
Packaged: 2019-01-04 14:12:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 36,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12170493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kozakura_dono/pseuds/Kozakura_dono
Summary: Why.  Am.  I.  Here.  I'm not selfless and I don't care about keeping canon mostly the same but tweaking it with small improvements, I'm selfish and cruel and mean and possessive and I want to go home-No.  No time for stupid questions.  Recalibrate and keep going.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I began writing this a few years ago. It's not complete and I'm not sure if it ever will be, but I feel like posting it.

My second chance wasn't marked by some huge, traumatic event. I hadn't lived a particularly eventful life, even if some of the people around me had. I wasn't spectacular. One minute, I was myself, 16 and bored, and the next...well. There was boredom, certainly, but not of the same sort.

I couldn't remember dying or anything. I just...went to bed, and my dreams were black and warm and comforting. And then, I was being squeezed by something, and it hurt. I couldn't do anything but let the nearly rhythmic contractions squeeze me, slowly but surely moving me from wherever I was. I couldn't move my own body. I couldn't do anything.  
It went quickly, and later, I would realize how good of a thing that was. Babies couldn't stay in the birth canal forever, and I was certainly no exception to the rules and limitations of human physiology. Also, the less time spent in the nether regions of the woman who would become my new mother, the better.

It went quickly, and later, I would realize how good of a thing that was. Babies couldn't stay in the birth canal forever, and I was certainly no exception to the rules and limitations of human physiology. Also, the less time spent in the nether regions of the woman who would become my new mother, the better.

A shock of prickling cold and unbearable brightness hit me, and I was already screaming and hollering, the cool air hitting my new lungs like a splash of refreshing but freezing water. I was still halfway in the damned womb, were babies even meant to do that so soon? Scream at such an unholy pitch with such fervor? I couldn't really do much but continue to yell as my shoulders met the air too, but then I was practically sliding out. It was disgusting and horrible and cold and slimy and-

I screamed a lot. Unfortunately for my parents, that was never going to change.

A heaving, big woman held me. Of course, 'big' was a relative term, and I assumed it was a woman only because the mother was typically the first to hold a newborn baby. And that was what I was. I'd ascertained that when even my horrid, bleary vision had made out the rough but horrendously recognizable female genitalia still in the act of childbirth.

My eyes could barely see and my ears could hardly hear, but what I heard was gibberish to me anyway. My body wouldn't stop screaming, even while I was being cleaned up and wrapped in a comforting, snuggly blanket.

There was more undecipherable talking above my screams, and eventually, I cried myself to sleep.

0-0-0-0  
Wanna know what it takes to really ruffle a know-it-all asshole who's seen a range of bullshit in her time? Chakra. Dead ass, fucking chakra.

I felt it. Under my skin. It was not warm, or comforting, or soft, or pleasant in any way, shape, or form. It was akin to bugs, but not just bugs. It burned, and not with the sort of external heat that moving to a shady place or facing a breeze could fix. It was the sort of heat born from stuffy, humid 115 degree summer days, the kind that works its way into your bones and makes you want to shave your layers down until the only thing remaining is a skeleton.

It wasn't quite intolerable all the time, and the few mostly lucid moments I had alone, I spent in reflection. These people-my parents, or, at least my father- could, with a twist of his fingers, create a perfect duplicate of himself. My mother would sometimes make her hands glow a soft green and alleviate the various, treatable discomforts of infancy. They spoke Japanese. Sometimes, around my mother's forehead, I could make out the glinting of a metallic headband and when she held me then, kissing me goodbye, I could feel the alien hardness of her utilitarian, muted green vest.

I had died and been reborn, that fact I'd known and more or less accepted. That I'd been reborn into the world of Naruto, however- that was something else entirely.

As much as I wanted otherwise, I couldn't discount the plain evidence that I witnessed on a weekly if not daily basis. I could pretend everything was a dream, that I wasn't there, but how would that be any different than my normal modus operandi? It wouldn't. I had to accept my circumstances. That was all I was capable of for those first few months, while my mind tried to ignore the strange energy under my skin.

My body couldn't do anything alone yet. I screamed, all day, every day until I fell asleep. The niggling, worming sensation never, ever ceased, and it distracted me too much to think to get a close look at my caretaker's face, and it provided a less embarrassing sensation to focus on than suckling some stranger's teat. The woman I fed from wasn’t even the one who’d birthed me, most of the time. I hated being a baby.

I understood why these people of Naruto's world had turned to fighting so much, and from what little I understood of Kaguya, why she would want to exterminate chakra users. Chakra, simply put, wasn't natural. It upset the delicate balance of the human body. No one living would know that, but as someone who'd lived and breathed a normal human existence for over 16 years, the difference was staggering. If this was what these people lived with, not knowing that there was any other way to live, nothing to console themselves with...They were insane, and they didn't even know why.

Humans don't react well under chronic pressure. Pain and unabating stress make everything worse. The fact that everyone was so wound up and paranoid, so willing to undergo such drastic action for so little gain, was truly the result of every person slowly going mad from their bodies' awareness that something was wrong. These people-these ninja, I supposed- were humans pushed to the brink. The price for the ability to perform superhuman feats was equal in proportion to how far past human boundaries they pushed past.  
Those were the conclusions I came to, at least, while I was learning to live with the pain. It was how I passed my first three months.  
I probably would have continued to think and do nothing longer, if my new parents hadn't decided my constant screaming and unnatural sullenness was enough cause, after a full, unrelenting summer with my never-ending shrieks, to take me to a doctor.

0-0-0-0

The room was white. My vision was no longer blurry, which didn't particularly match what I knew of infant anatomy and developmental milestones, but this was the world where children began training as killers as soon as their chubby fingers could grip a knife. Perhaps children developed faster here.

Mother was gone for the day, gone out somewhere outside of my knowledge, which admittedly could have been literally anywhere but my crib, the kitchen, and what functioned as a living room. She'd been gone, by my count, at least two days, and Father had been feeding me disgusting but strangely satisfying milk-substitute. The wet-nurse woman had disappeared some weeks ago.

I didn't scream just because chakra was shit, and I didn't scream just because I was scared (which I definitely was, no doubt about it). I am, as my first parents call me, 'ornery' and 'disagreeable' by my very nature. When I suffer, everyone suffers with me. Complaining and bitching and groaning are what sustain my existence. In short, I am an utter and unrepentant asshole, and proud of it.

So. I screamed for the hell of it, but for the first time, because I was with people other than my primary caretakers, I decided to be quiet. Just because. And when Father attempted to explain my problems to the doctor (at least, that what I assumed he did: I couldn't understand much of anything being said), I simply stuck my hands in my mouth and gurgled contentedly, planning to make up for this rest period as soon as we got home. My infant vocal chords were surprisingly resilient: they'd never gone hoarse, not even once, though I spent the majority of my waking moments shrieking like a banshee.

I could hear the frustration, even if I couldn't understand the words. The doctor, as hard as he tried to hide it, seemed bemused. I obviously wasn't screaming as badly as Father had no doubt described.  
The visit ended in short order. I kept mostly quiet when the doctor put a frigid stethoscope on my back and chest, simply whining a little bit in discomfort around the fists I was wholeheartedly attempting to shove into my gaping, toothless mouth, but other than that, my behavior was exemplary. Public image is very important to me, you see.

Father took me home, and in case anyone from the hospital was watching/listening (you never knew with ninja, or at least, I wasn't familiar enough with ninja to know whether that was a thing here or not), I kept up the pleasant facade. It was a familiar song and dance, even if it'd been a few months since I'd needed to perform it.

The walk was...strange. I'd come to terms with chakra because I saw it and felt it daily at home (whoever my mother and father were, each could perform various jutsu with little issue, and from my mother's flak jacket, I assumed she was at least chunin level). I'd grown up sandwiched between teeny rural towns, ritzy suburbs, and a decaying city. This place was...like a flea market. Kind of. But with infinitely more people. I think it was the lack of cars that really got to me. There weren't even horse and buggies or carriages or just plain beasts of burden running around. The streets were chaos, a thriving mess of human bodies and human bodies alone.

I took the opportunity to do something a little different for once. It wasn't often that my Father held me, and I needed to make the most of this rare chance. Plus, I was just barely out of the 'newborn' phase: No one would ever believe an infant could be a purposeful line stepper, not at my age.

I took my hands out of my mouth, liberally coating them in baby slime from my mouth before I released them into the world. I allowed my mouth to drain down into the lightweight onesie, thoroughly coating myself and Father's shoulder. He was wearing a thin yukata, so he would be aware quite soon. I acted quickly.

Even though he was a ninja, he wasn't expecting his infant daughter to sock him in the face with spit-drenched hands. He stilled under my assault and leveled a calm stare into my eyes.

"That's..... Stop, now." And all I could think was, 'What,' followed shortly by a vehement, 'Fuck off.' And so I did it again, shrieking with laughter that sounded innocent because my voice was a baby's voice and it was hard to sound like the jerk I was when my mean-spirited laugh sounded like a giggle.

The way he looked at me changed then, and he grabbed both of my tiny fists with one of his, giving me a surprisingly hard glare. I grinned, big and toothless, and I was sure he could see the comprehension in my eyes.

My Father was a dick. A grade A asshole used to being listened to and respected. Ohhhh. His type was my favorite.

0-0-0-0

"Stop. That." he ordered. Well, I couldn't hit him and my control of my mouth was limited to sucking milk and drooling. I wanted to spit, but I knew I would fail. Instead, I opened my maw and let the waterfall gush. It wasn't like he could get away from me. He would have to drop me in front of all these people.

He was actually quite young, I realized, as he actually held me an arm's width away from his body. I laughed some more. Dumbass. He looked so fucking stupid and he didn't even know. What an idiot.

"No." The man-my father- Grand Asshole Extraordinaire- looked up from his reports and gave me a look between withering and surprised.  
I wasn't a year old yet. I knew that. I was about 273 days old (who the hell was I kidding, I kept track of every single second. If I didn’t have to sleep so much, I would have known exactly how many minutes I’d been alive, too), and too unknowledgeable to speak in full sentences, but I could say some simple words.

"Put the ink down. Now." There was a definite command in his voice and his black eyes glimmered at me. If I were actually a child, I would have been cowed into submission.

Unfortunately for the two of us, before I was reborn, I was a rebellious 16-year-old asshole used to way worse than what any semi-reasonable person would be willing to throw at an almost 9-month-old.

I leveled an unimpressed stare at him. "Ride or die." And before he could say anything to that, I knocked over the ink pot and ruined a night's worth of paperwork.

His face did such interesting things when he was mad, and he was so willing to yell and scream at me. It was great. Mother had a temper but entirely too aloof to ever stoop to cursing out an infant.

I stared upward at him as his skin cycled through colors and back, paying careful attention to the words I could understand and attempting to decipher the new insults based on context clues.

"Whore," I said clearly, my childish voice ringing over his with ease. That was the fun thing about this man: He said things in anger, but most of the time, he was too angry to remember what he'd said. I hadn't learned that word from him of course, but from one of Mother's trips to the local market. He paled to a pallid grey under his straight fringe of hair, tirade halted.

"Whore," I said again, but louder, much, much louder. A look of abject panic crossed his face then because if there was one thing this man knew about me, it was that I had the lung capacity to let the entire compound know that I was emotional.

"Ah, Shizuha, it's important that you don't say that w-"

"WHHHHOOOOORRRREEEEE!" It was worth it.

0-0-0-0

I passed my days being as disagreeable as I possibly could, slowly driving my new father insane. I learned lots of foul language, and I applied them perfectly. Mother, when she was home, was not pleased.

I nearly made it a full year before I couldn't stand crawling anymore. Learning to walk again was a chore but worth it. Once I could walk, my parents allowed me to roam through the rooms. Well, that wasn't exactly true. My father kicked me out of his office and let me do whatever I wanted as long as I did it at least 10 yards away from him.

The walls were very thin, because, to my delight, they were literally made of paper. I fell through at least one daily, and I painted on others, trying to develop my motor skills as quickly ad my speech and movement. I'd been an artsy type of person once, constantly sculpting and sewing and drawing, but in this body, the best I could manage was uncontrolled splotches of ink across the walls, like messy Rorschach blotches. I would have killed for a coloring book and some crayons, just to practice staying in the lines, but either the people in this world didn't have them, or my parents didn't think to get me one. Knowing them, I thought it was more likely to be the second.

To be honest, my new parents seemed like smart people. They spoke like intelligent people, and they had many discussions that went over my head, even though I learned new words every day. But they were young. Painfully young. My mother looked about the same age I'd been before I was reborn, though I admittedly never quite looked as young as I was in my original body. My father only looked a little bit older, and most of the time, he acted like a frazzled, bratty, sullen six-year-old. God, that man was fun to fuck with.

But I digress. They were young, and they didn't have any experience with children. Otherwise, Father would have known not to allow a child not even one-year-old to wander around the house, unsupervised, for hours at a time. Now that I spoke more often, he didn't even feed me unless I told him I was hungry. It was a little scary, though I valued the freedom I had because of it.

Mother wasn't all that much better, though she did a better job of acting like an adult than Father did. She just...wasn't home often enough to make a difference, and when she was home, she was never really here mentally, at least not with me. I felt a little bad for her, but I hoped that she would continue to stay away, physically and mentally.

If I were any other child, I probably would have been seriously injured already. The house was barely child proof and I knew to avoid touching the knives and swords I found under the floorboards fairly often, and I knew better than to crawl up to high places I couldn't safely get down from.

Meanwhile, I began to play with that horrid, burning itch under my skin. Oh, chakra.

It was very easy to mold, to get it to do what I wanted it to. I'd learned to mute it a little bit- learning to turn my full awareness of it back on wasn't that hard, and learning how to send it to my feet or hands wasn't difficult either even if it didn’t feel good.

The problem came when I tried to put it to use.

Chakra? Is fucking toxic. I remembered how the Kyuubi's chakra had wounded Sakura in Shippuden. Well, I certainly wasn't a tailed beast, but my chakra burned like touching a light-bulb.

I walked around with burns all over my hands for weeks, still playing with pooling the fickle energy to various body parts, but making sure to keep it inside. If only I had a way to keep myself from being burned. If I could push out even more, I could create some wicked blue flames from my fingers.

Well. For maybe, like, a minute or two. Pooling chakra in my body was fine, probably because it never really left my system. Even when I could send my chakra all over my body automatically, it was more the mental strain of an extremely repetitive task that made me tired than anything else, along with that strange feeling like my insides had been splashed with a liberal coating of hydrochloric acid. Following the incident when I burned the shit out of my hands, however, I'd barely lasted 5 minutes before I collapsed, and it wasn't from the pain.

It was frustrating. I didn't know what I was doing wrong. I assumed that I was channeling too much chakra, but I wasn't sure, and I wasn't eager to try again, only to do something stupid like permanently damage the nerves in my fingers or something.

0-0-0-0

I learned that my father was called Fugaku. Uchiha Fugaku. It scared me for a bit, but I was lulled into a false sense of security when I learned that he had both a living father and an older brother. I never met either of these men, but their existence assured me that the event of canon Naruto couldn’t come to pass. I was in denial and lying to myself and I knew it.

When I hit 18 months, with a mostly destroyed house and a set of skills under my belt, the easy life of independence and unpunished destruction changed.

Grandfather died, killed in combat. The clan fumed. I couldn't see it directly of course. I still rarely left the house to venture into society, though I did vanish into the tiny yard quite often. My father, as the second son, occasionally received visitors from other clan members, mostly crotchety old folks who talked over him in his own home. I loathed their visits.

Don't get me wrong, seeing Fugaku was hilarious, but only when I was the cause of his consternation. Having these fuckers come into my house and talk at and over my father like he was a piece of furniture- well, I got a little temperamental. As always though, I kept my peace until they left, often sitting quite by his side in finery that would be whisked away as soon as the guests left. The clothing didn’t belong to us personally, but our clan tailor had a stockpile specifically for clan use.

Another thing- the kimono were beautiful, and made of thick, opulent silk in gorgeous colors, fans and birds and whatnot painted across the fabric, and they kept me from fidgeting. I was glad to wear them for aesthetic purposes, but they were so pretty I couldn't do anything in them. I couldn't eat or drink or move suddenly or in a way that might crease the material. The thought of irrevocably ruining then terrified me, made me anxious in a way I had been beginning to forget since I had gotten reborn into this world where I barely had to interact with the public or talk to people and act normal.

Thankfully, I wasn't expected to speak to Fugaku's "honored guests" because I was both a small child and a girl (but oh, how that thought chafed).

After maybe a month of angry geezers coming and going, talking shit about the village and about my mother, I woke up one day to a strange and eerie silence.

The previous Clan head, my uncle, was dead. Uchiha Fugaku, the only remaining son of Uchiha Akihiko, was Clan Head of the Uchiha Clan, by emergency order of the Council of Elders, effective immediately.

Everything went downhill from there.


	2. Chapter 2

Mikoto came back from wherever she was, though she wasn't happy about it.  Fugaku was even less happy about being the clan head, so she held her tongue.  Most of the time.

We moved out of that wrecked house with the knives under the floorboards and broken walls and the teeny garden within two days of Mikoto getting back.  I stopped approaching Fugaku at all: There were almost always shadowy, scowling ninja in his office now, and after the first time I'd nearly been stabbed by an errantly chucked kunai and scuttled away hissing with my tail between my legs, I'd kept my distance.

I really didn't have many things I wanted to take with me to the new house.  I knew that the moment we moved into that dwelling, wherever it was, I'd have much more scrutiny than ever before.  The thought made my hands sweat and my heart stutter, made my breath shallow. 

I gathered up the few things I did want, wrapping them in clothing.  What I didn't, I began dumping into the garbage.

"What are you doing, Shizuha?" Mikoto asked as I stuffed old papers into the trash.  I gave her a flat look.  The fuck did it look like I was doing?

"I’m throwing this shit away.  Obviously." She frowned at my answer, pretty, rosy lips pulling down into a frown.

"That language is unbecoming, and you're getting old enough to know it, Shizuha." I glared. 

I...really did not like other people's expectations or restraints imposed on me.  I hated it.  And this woman wasn't my mother. 

"You don’t have to act like you care that much just because Fugaku has a bunch of assholes in his office all the time.  It’s not like they don’t think I’m an unwanted bastard already." I shoved my trash further down the can and turned away.

She...she was in front of me.  Ah.  Mother, the active shinobi. 

She had a cold glint in her eye, and she stood with her arms crossed.  This woman was a murderer, and she knew that I knew.  This woman had cut down dozens, maybe hundreds, and she.  Did not. Care.  A bead of freezing sweat trickled down my spine.

"That tone is unacceptable.  I know I haven't been here often enough to fix whatever your father teaches you, but that's changing starting now.  Apologize." Each word made me want to die inside.  I felt my legs trembling against my will, felt like I was gonna melt into a puddle or vomit.

Killing intent.  On me?  I smiled grimly, showing too many teeth.  Thank God the fast development had applied to my teeth too, or I would have looked like a complete idiot.

This _bitch_.  Trying to make me do something I didn't want to do.

"Go fuck yourself, Mikoto.  Fugaku is an asshole, that's true, but I don't need him to see what you are.  You're more of a pig than he could ever be." Her eyes widened, and she opened her mouth to speak, but I cut her off.

"Ah?  What are you gonna do?  Throw some killing intent at me until I beg for forgiveness?  Hit me?  I dare you. Show the clan you're just as unfit a mother as everyone says you are.  Who will they believe?  Your dumbass couldn’t even use a condom properly and you obviously don’t have very good self-control or I wouldn’t be standing here." I spat.  Literally and figuratively.  

I walked past her, slid the kitchen door shut quietly, and padded to my room, the tremors in my hands gradually subsiding.

I had more trash to sort.

0-0-0-0

We moved into the new house.  I smiled shyly and ducked my head, quietly greeting the elders at the doors, taking their coats and other coverings and whatever as Mikoto lead them to the tea room, a charming smile on her face.  I was mostly ignored, as always.  It still left a bitter taste in my mouth.

I successfully forced myself to resist the urge to break things and draw on the walls.  Did I occasionally disappear a tea cup?  Yes.  Did I also stock pile ink and paper in my room?  Also yes.  But I didn't draw anything.  Mikoto hadn't directly approached me since before we'd moved, but I felt her presence in my room.

I disliked my family more intensely than ever.  Fortunately, there was now a maid in the house, a young woman with one arm and very quick reflexes.  Her name was Naoko-san.

Naoko-san did a lot for me.  She taught me how to read.  And she began showing me how to use chakra.

I spent months learning how to read basic katakana and hiragana.  Then, I learned kanji (or, at least, the process of learning and memorizing the infinite number of kanji there seemed to be).  It was slow going, but not nearly as slow as it would have been if I'd been older.  Thank God for the abundant neural connections in toddler brains.  I would have been left illiterate without them.

When I could read and write well enough to be at least somewhat legible and coherent, I began writing on the walls again.  Well, that was a lie.  I began taping pieces of paper onto the walls (which were also made of paper and begged me every day to draw on). Naoko-san, as a rule, did not clean my room, or go into it at all really, because I cleaned it thoroughly myself, so the new habit went unnoticed.  

I wrote the nastiest messages I could, and then I stuck them to the wall.  I made it clear that Mikoto was unwelcome, that I didn't like her, and didn't need her.  It made me extremely uncomfortable that she would violate my safe place time and time again, and that I couldn't really do anything about it.

I wanted to move out.  Out and away.  Anywhere but that damned compound, with my too young parents and dismissive elders.  Naoko-san was decent, but not enough of an incentive to stay behind.

I refused to eat with Mikoto or Fugaku.  I knew it worried them both, on some level, especially Fugaku when he realized that I hadn't come to bother him in forever.  I never was one for full-fledged meals anyway, and I distractedly munched on whatever Naoko-san gave me throughout the day between my self-appointed tasks.  Most of the food this world seemed to have was shit anyway, with no salty, savory ramen anywhere within sight.  The Uchiha, of course, was a traditional ninja clan; we ate the blandest shit possible to eliminate strong body odors that could give us away on a mission.

6 months passed that way.  I made it to the two-year mark, unnoticed other than a beginner's guide on kunai and shuriken and some wooden practice weapons to match.  I was glad that my birthday passed by mostly unnoticed, but unsettled, too.

I hoped that Fugaku and Mikoto never had any other children.  These people were not fit to be parents.  Even if I was a terror, they were phenomenally horrid at dealing with kids.  Realistically speaking, every kid had bratty moments, and using killing intent on a child was like whipping one to the point of near-unconsciousness for refusing to eat their breakfast or something.  And Fugaku, constantly just allowing me to do whatever I wanted when he shoved me away from infanthood on, was no better than Mikoto.  If I were a real child, I wouldn't have been able to speak or use the bathroom on my own.  I probably wouldn't have survived.  Our old house was still traditionally lived in by ninja-generations of paranoia had left the floor full of false floorboards full of weapons, even if many were old.

I kept my room extremely clean, other than the piling notes for Mikoto.  I wrote them out like clockwork, drafting my first one at sun-up, and all of the ones following every other hour.  My penmanship improved slowly, but I wrote so much that the change was inevitable.  I learned more words, specifically reading old tomes of family history and ancient poems of decades-dead kin just so that I could learn more artistic, more expressive characters.  I often asked Naoko-san for help when I encountered archaic words, which she willingly provided without hesitation or inquiry as to why I was reading those dusty old books anyway.  Naoko-san was a decent type of person, but sometimes I felt like she was more of a robot than I was comfortable with. 

Along with volumes of calligraphy and flowery poems about death, destruction, and duty, I found books about chakra. 

Naoko-san taught me, early on into our acquaintance, that my method of getting chakra out of my body wasn't right.  Chakra ran through energy pathways for a reason after all, and I hadn't taken that into account.

Utilizing chakra to its utmost efficiency was something most people here were born knowing the rudiments of, and once I understood the theory, it wasn't that difficult for me to apply it either.  

Chakra was like cellular energy, in a sense.  Imagine this scenario.  You need to get a vase down a flight of steps.  You have two options; either throw the vase down, or carry it down.  While throwing it down is quicker and gets the job done, the vase obviously shatters and is useless.  Carrying it down seems inefficient but really, it's the path that guarantees that the vase will be usable 

I sat on the cleared floor of my bedroom, eyes closed, concentrating on the energy within.

Chakra flowed through the body naturally here, through premeditated little pathways.  I was still very young, so those pathways were unstable and still forming.  That fact made it more difficult for me to navigate my own chakra pathways, but it also made it possible for me to mold them more than a little bit.

Though I was a child, I was definitely a main-line Uchiha.  My shinobi ancestors had gifted me unnaturally large chakra reserves, or at least the capability of developing them.  This body, though small physically, was willing to work with me.  By forcing my chakra pathways themselves to open wider, I sped up the rate at which I used my chakra.  By using more chakra more frequently, through meditation like I was doing and through weapons practice, my reserves were able to expand quite noticeably, at least to me.

When I finished, I was utterly drenched in sweat, panting and shaking.  My stomach growled so hard I felt like I would vomit.  I grasped my water bottle and chugged it down, and then scarfed down a protein bar I had nicked from Mikoto's mission pack.

Following that, I stretched my muscles out, as always enjoying my toddler-flexibility.  It was fun how my limbs seemed to be made of elastic, not that it was particularly special.  The ways I could contort and stretch made me think of mostly-forgotten tap and ballet lessons from my first life.

I methodically wrapped my hands and ankles, feeling disgusting as the bandages stuck to my sweaty skin.  I wanted to shower, but I wasn't done training yet.  I gathered my weapons and retreated to one of the more remote, shady corners of our yard, which was more of a sprawling combined garden and training ground than a yard.  There were old targets, the bright red having faded to a muted brown that hardly stood out from the aged wood surface the rings were painted on.  I didn't mind-it was better, in my opinion, that I had many different targets (even if they were busted) in varied locations than a single new one.

By that point, my accuracy still had leaps and bounds to go, but I a better shot than I had ever been in my first life.  My accuracy with my wooden weapons was maybe 85%; I hit the targets virtually every time (not that they were that far away) and hit bulls’-eyes most of the times I threw as well.  It wasn't good enough.  I wanted perfect aim, every time, and I wanted to be able to throw from further distances.  I would give myself another year if I could stand it because intellectually I understood that the reason why I still missed the bulls-eye sometimes was because my muscles were still developing along with my hand-eye coordination.

I had various reps I liked to do.  I started slow, throwing each kunai one at a time and then each shuriken.  I aimed carefully.  This way, my accuracy was almost always 100%.  Then, I scrambled up the trees to pull my wooden knives and stars out the targets and threw them all again, but without taking the time to aim.  I did this ten more times because I thought it would build up muscle memory while helping to strengthen my growing body.  After that, I moved the targets and started again. This type of training entailed a different sort of meditation.  My body was still a child's body and my mind still wasn't native to this world.  By pushing myself to the point of exhaustion, I could force my pathways to start drawing from my diminished chakra reserves until was I was almost dangerously low.

The hum of chakra in my body was still foreign.  Even if it only lasted a few hours before the energy began to renew itself, those few hours of total comfort were worth the pain and the soreness.

My hands were covered in slowly oozing nicks and cuts when I finally finished that portion.  Scrambling up and down the trees made the activity a kind of full-bodied workout, but I didn't sustain a high enough heart rate to consider it real cardio training.  I sprinted laps around the garden under the glare of the noon sun, everything in me protesting, sweat dripping from every pore and into my eyes and scrapes.

I didn't have a timer, so I just went until I couldn't run anymore.  Realistically, I probably only went for maybe 30 minutes.  It felt like hours.  I collapsed into the grass, finally drawing my workout to an end.

The sun was high in the sky, the air like a humid blanket with the cool, dewy grass behind me.  It took an ungodly amount of effort to stagger into the house again. 

"That's quite a routine you've got there." 

I felt like hissing.

Don't.  Fucking.  Talk to me.

Of course, he kept talking.

"How long have you been training, Shizuha?" He kept talking at me like he didn't even care I wasn't going to respond.

I felt like vomiting.

I stalked a bit closer to him, exhausted and unsteady on my feet, did my business, and then shambled into my bathroom to rinse the bile out of my mouth, gulp down water, and soak in the bathtub.

My afternoon was very peaceful, after that.

0-0-0-0

"Uchiha-sama has ordered your presence at dinner tonight, Shizuha-sama."

I glared down at the artistic kanji in front of me.  Of course, they wanted me to eat dinner with them.

I liked Naoko-san most of the time but at times like this, I wished I was alone again.  If I didn't obey orders, Naoko-san would make me comply.  She wasn't above using some force.

Fine.  I would go to dinner.  There was likely to be food I couldn't make myself there, at the very least. 

The sun wasn't anywhere near setting, but I would put the time at maybe 6.  I shrugged on a clean shirt and bunny slippers and let Naoko-san lead me from my room.

My hair swished behind me as I tried not to stomp.  I didn't want to be near Fugaku or Mikoto.  Was I childish?  Yes.  Did I care?  No.

Naoko-san opened the screen doors for me and closed them after I entered.

"Uchiha-sama.  Shizuha-sama is here, as you requested."

"Thank you, Naoko-san.  You are dismissed." Naoko-san left me alone then, with 4 black eyes staring at me.

Assholes.  They were good enough to set up a plate in front of me though, so I dug in.

"Shizuha," Mikoto began, hesitation clear in her face and her voice.  I didn't look up and kept eating.

"It's come to our attention, that is, your father and I have realized that you have begun training on your own."

Yes.  Months ago.

"Your father was quite impressed with your independent progress and your initiative to begin your shinobi training."

Fuck Fugaku.  If he wanted to help me, he could fuck off somewhere else and never talk to me again.

I finished my plate and set my lacquered chopsticks down with an audible clink against the porcelain plate. 

"Is there a point to this, or are we just here for pleasant conversation?  I have studies to get back to, if it's the latter."

Mikoto flushed red.  Fugaku pinched the bridge of his nose.

"Shizuha, I'm trying to help you!  Just let me finish, okay?  Just this once."

She took so long to gather her thoughts or whatever the hell it was she was doing as she continued to stare at me and very pointedly not fidget.

Fugaku, at least, seemed as anxious to hurry it along as I was.

"We got a tutor for you, okay?  Starting next week, you'll be picked up and taken to a different part of the compound and trained with some other clan children your age.  You're younger than we normally start with, but you're ahead of where most children are.  That's all.  You can go now."

Thank fucking god.  I left that nasty little reunion like a bat out of hell, and only stopped to think when I was firmly settled in my room again.

A tutor...that wouldn't be so bad.  I didn't want to interact in any capacity whatsoever with other children but I wouldn't be expected to take care of them, so that was good at least.

I didn't necessarily want to be labeled a prodigy, but I did want to survive.  Even if I ended up dying in the Massacre, I didn't want to be killed by some no-name shinobi, and if my memory served me right, we were either in the middle of a war, or at the start of one.  I didn't see how I could be a shinobi in this era and avoid extremely hostile situations like literal warzones.

I kept up my grueling schedule, even on the day I was set to start training with my tutor.  The sun rose early, but my official training didn't start till past sun-up, as Naoko-san had informed me after that deeply uncomfortable dinner.  I had more than enough time to complete the first half of my punishing routine with a sufficient resting period and filling breakfast after.

Naoko-san was kind enough to pack me a bento and an icy water bottle.  She handed them off to me as I stepped through the doors to look at the tutor.

"Good morning, Shizuha-sama.  I am Uchiha Daisuke, and I will be responsible for your training from now on."

The fuck he was.  The only damn person responsible for my training was me.  Did this person know what the fuck the village was up against for the next couple of decades?  

That was rude.  I breathed.  It wasn't his fault that he didn't know this world's future and he didn't know me, either.

"Thank you for your time, Daisuke-sensei.  Please take care of me." I offered a respectful bow.

Daisuke wasn't a man of many words.  We walked to the training area in silence.  I wiped a hand across my damp forehead.  It was already hot.

He was pretty enough, I thought.  He looked more like Mikoto than Fugaku, with pale skin and lustrous hair, though it was more of a brown-black than Mikoto's own raven tresses.  It was long and secured by a thin black band.  The ends touched the center of his back.

My own hair I kept braided tightly against my scalp.  It was curly and frizzy, and did not do well whatsoever in the summer.  I didn't understand how Daisuke-sensei and for that matter, Mikoto, could keep their skin so pale without ever showing any signs of burning.  I figured it must have had something to do with chakra or very, very good sunscreen.  My skin had darkened considerably since my days as a squalling infant, partially due to time in the sun.

There were exactly 9 other children waiting under the shade of a huge tree, some talking, some rough housing, as children were wont to do.  I was the youngest and the smallest, though not by a particularly large margin.  I wasn't small for a girl my age.

When Daisuke-sensei got closer, the children immediately fell into line, the noise leveling off to a low hum.  I suspected it would have been silent if not for my presence.

"Rise." He commanded.  I stared openly at him.  That wasn't the voice of a weakling left behind in the war to school children.  The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

My eyes narrowed as I stared at him in concentration.  There was something just in the corner of my mind, something niggling that I couldn't decipher.  It wasn't anything as obvious or sinister as killing intent, but I wondered.

"This is Shizuha-sama.  She will be joining us in our training from now on."

He gestured to me.  I smiled blandly and bowed again, this time more shallowly.

"I'm pleased to make your acquaintance.  Let's work well together." 

I walked to the end of the row, sitting next to a small boy dressed similarly to me, save for an impractically bright red shirt.  We didn't look at each other or anything, thank God.  Unplanned eye contact was the worst.

"Today, we will resume the leaf exercise to begin.  You all know what to do, and I expect that each of you will be able to keep at least 2 leaves on for the next 30 minutes while running through the basic kata.  Begin." 

Well.  I didn't know the basic kata, but the leaf exercise seemed like it might be easy enough even if my chakra channels felt, for lack of better terms, swollen and sore and scorched from my earlier training.  I could probably just copy what the others were doing for the kata.

I jumped up and grabbed some leaves from a low hanging branch, all of the ones on the ground having been claimed already.

How to do this...

I was able to channel some chakra to my fingers fairly easily, but when I tried to make the leaf stick to just them, they burned into ashes in seconds.  Hmm.

I looked closely at the nearest child.  There was no tell-tale glow emanating from her forehead, just two leaves easily sticking despite her quick, darting movements as though they'd been glued on.

I was probably channeling too much chakra, yet again.  The channels closest to the forehead were hard to reach, probably for good reason.  Exploding a channel in the arm or leg was survivable.  Exploding one of the channels close to the brain was not.  And, I belatedly realized, the spots where the leaves we're sticking didn't correlate with any tenketsu.

Hmm.

I channeled chakra from my fingers again, and the unearthly blue light appeared, concentrated, at my fingertips.  Then, I tried to push that bit of energy around.  It responded surprisingly well, forming a thin coat around all of the digits.

The leaves stuck, until they burned to ashes.

Well.  I didn't want to coat my forehead in chakra that way until I was sure I wouldn't damage my brain or eyes so that plan was out either way.

I began to mirror the closest child, slowly moving through their movements while I thought, absently pushing more chakra from my fingers and spreading it.

The leaf exercise, from what I remembered, was common in the Academy, and to me, had seemed a basic step in beginning chakra control.  Here, everyone was used to having a baseline amount of chakra in their bodies at all times, so all it likely took was a bit of concentration to make the leaves stick.  

That made more sense than the way I had tried.  How many kids even knew much about tenketsu?  Probably not many.

That was it!

The permanent skin itching and burning- the one that had nearly driven me insane as an infant, that I still felt whenever I didn't distract myself- that was how I needed to stick the leaves to my forehead.

I focused on the itch for a second, deliberately stuck 2 leaves on my irritated forehead, and tried not to scratch my skin off as I kept going through the kata.

The real trick of the leaf exercise, at least for me, would be learning to ignore the latent chakra in my skin just enough to not feel the burn while being aware of it enough to control it.

I put the rest of my leaves on my head.  Keeping them up there wasn't hard.  I had been trying for years to become less aware of my chakra, to some success, but it was far easier for me to focus on the incessant, scratchy, painful feeling than to ignore it, even while practicing new kata.  Unfortunately for me, while I had successfully been rapidly expanding my chakra reserves, the more chakra I had, the more the feeling evolved from a simple but painful itch to something closer to a full-on burn.  I needed to find a solution to that, pronto.

The kata seemed, like the leaf exercise, very basic to me.  My muscles, perpetually sore from my daily workouts, twanged pleasantly at the slow pace.

Daisuke-sensei came to stand in my peripheral vision.  I continued to go through the forms, slowly trying to commit them to memory and emulating the girl beside me exactly.  My eyes and sense of depth perception were much, much better than in my first life, and I was an Uchiha to boot.  Copying the girl was thus quite easy.

"I said 2 leaves, Shizuha-sama."

Because he was a ninja and suddenly right in front of me.  Of course.

"Sorry, Sensei." I said through gritted teeth.

I just...why did people have to talk to me?  Even if he was the teacher.  

He crouched down to my eye level.

Daisuke-sensei was very pretty, even if he had a glass eye and a vicious scar curving around his jaw.  If he didn't get out of my fucking face, I would claw his real eye out, though.

"You'll wear yourself out before the next exercise if you push too hard."

What?  I wasn't even sweating too heavily yet, and my heart rate was relatively low.  This kind of chakra control was very easy, if far more annoying than my usual method.

"I'll be fine, Sensei." 

He frowned but left me in peace for the duration of the exercise after that.

Next, we ran through obstacle courses.  It was fun, I guess, though very dirty.  More importantly, it was useful.  We had to duck and dodge so often my head spun.  I would be covered in bruises by the next morning, though it could have gone worse.

That lasted for half an hour, at most.

We did some weapons training, though it was similar enough to my own training.  It wasn't exciting.  We had the same wooden practice weapons, and unlike in the garden, I couldn't find any ancient, rusted kunai or shuriken to practice with either.  The only difference was that I was able to throw from further distances, owing to the larger field.

Finally, we were taken back to the shady area where we had started.  It was a little past noon, by my estimation.  I wanted a shower.

"Sit."

Daisuke-sensei really did have a commanding voice.  And his face was nice.

"To finish, we will discuss last week's assigned reading." He eyed the boy in the bright red shirt, who suddenly looked very shifty.  "In case you've forgotten what you read, it was the basic history of Uchiha Madara and the circumstances which lead to the founding of this village."

Easy.  The Uchiha of bygone eras were all literate assholes with penchants for scathing poetry.  I’d read so many beautifully crafted insults that I could spit out a dozen centuries-old family feuds off the top of my head, but no one had written so much as Madara himself.  He’d been such a petty, shady asshole.  Sickening.  I loved him.

"Hideo.  You begin."

Red shirt, newly dubbed Hideo, looked constipated.

"Uh, Madara-dono.  Well, he was a founder of the village and the strongest Uchiha who ever lived.  And, and, um...he used a gunbai!"

Madara had been born the oldest brother among 5.  Only one other survived to adulthood.  My heart ached.  In my first life- my brother was alone now, but probably alive.  To know that 3 of my younger brothers had died...I too would have done whatever it took to end the fighting.  Or died to avenge my loved ones.

And this body felt so much.  It could have been the curse of hatred.  It also could have been my unwanted childish body giving me less control over my emotions.  My impulse control had never been very good, but here…Well.  It certainly wasn’t bravery that let me snipe at Mikoto while receiving a good dose of Killing Intent.  My mouth ran ahead of me, my head pinpointing weakness like a shark zeroing in on blood miles away automatically and words flowed out like venom, satisfying me as I correctly read a social situation and manipulated the desired reaction.  I shook my head to clear it.

Every child was expected to recite at least one fact mentioned in the reading.  It was really a kindness that Daisuke-sensei made Hideo start, as they were not allowed to repeat facts.

Of course, the texts they had access to were very Uchiha biased.  Mine were most likely far, far worse, as most were about as old as the village, with a few scattered in from the various wars and a couple of ancient ones for good measure, with none from outsiders.

Madara's own personal scrolls resided in my house’s library.  Most of them were sealed and could only be read with a Sharingan, but he was a particularly prolific writer and had not seen fit to seal most of his shady poetry.

"Do you have anything to add, Shizuha-sama?" 

I thought.

Of course, as children, this group had mostly focused on Madara's martial prowess and various jutsu.  

"Madara-dono was more than the strongest Uchiha, and his strength lay in more areas than his fighting ability.  He knew the pain of losing everything.  One by one, year after year, he saw his brothers slaughtered, on the battlefield and in their beds until he was left with only Izuna."

I paused to look around.  Little faces stared back at me with attention.  Most of it did not look kind.  I continued anyway.  Why the hell had I even looked around in the first place?  I didn’t need anyone’s approval.

"Even Izuna, his beloved brother, the only one who grew with him to adulthood, he could not save, despite being the strongest Uchiha to ever live.  The might of the clan alone was not enough.  Madara-dono was the first among us to see the value in cooperation and ending the wars.  That is why we speak of him with respect to this day, even if he later lost sight of what mattered.  Not because he fought well, but because he helped usher in a new way of life."

There were a few snickers.  Obviously, the Clan did not exactly stress this particular teaching.  I thought it was stupid.  More importantly, I did not want to be slaughtered by my own unborn brother in a dozen and change years.  I frowned.  I was the heir apparent to this clan.  Not the Heir quite yet, since I hadn’t been confirmed by the Elders, but still.  I had a direct influence over and connection to the current Clan Head, plus I was his daughter.  The disrespect toward me was a disrespect toward my entire family line.  That couldn’t stand.

"My mother says that your father is a weak man who should have never inherited the clan and that you aren't even his daughter." 

Well, Fugaku hadn’t been intended to inherit leadership of the clan, and I really wasn't his daughter in soul, but this child didn't know that.  I smiled at her.  Toleration of disrespect now would cement a weak image of me.  I couldn’t play the docile, obeisant daughter anymore.

"It’s funny you would say that while we’re talking about Madara-dono.  He would have been disappointed that someone your age is still so reliant on your mother.  Are you still breastfeeding, too?"

There were a few snickers.  Daisuke-sensei had a very severe frown on his face.

"That's enough.  I won't have petty insults here.  You are Uchiha, and I expect you all to act as such."

I continued to smile.

"But Daisuke-sensei, don't you know our laws?  She's just threatened my position as clan heir, and publicly at that.  Shouldn't she be punished to prevent dissent within the clan?"

"Shizuha-sama, that's-"

"You know, Madara-dono's own father cut the tongues out from his cousins and uncles who claimed that he was illegitimate when he was only 12.  Before him, the kind, pink-haired Uchiha Tetsuke allowed this kind of talk and within the year, the clan had turned on itself, leading to the slaughter of over half of our ancestral kin.  That's more than the Senju ever managed during any of their attacks."

I wasn't going to cut the tongue out of a small child.

She didn't need to know that though.

(It's just an annoying little kid, part of me argued.  What harm could really come of this? No one here is older than 6.  I don’t have to do anything here.  Another part of me snarled.  I wouldn’t be some fictional bitch baby’s punching bag.  _I wouldn’t_.  And we were all headed toward slaughter if the Clan wasn’t changed in some drastic way, and I wanted to live, that change needed to me.)

Uchiha Tetsuke and all of his extended family had ended up dead, leading to generations of culling younger brothers and sisters with a valid claim to clan leadership.  If circumstances had been different, Madara would have had to eliminate Izuna's claim somehow to prevent grasping elders from turning his beloved brother against him.

I ambled over to the pale, wide-eyed girl, my smile still affixed and coy even as I violated her personal space.  I gently gripped a lock of her hair between two of my fingertips.

"Wouldn't that just be horrible?  An entire branch of the clan just cut away," my chakra flared through my fingers, raggedly burning the strands in my grip to ash, "Because one stupid little baby couldn't keep her mouth shut?" My smile never wavered.

Part of me was screaming that what I did wasn't right.  I screamed back at it.  This clan would bite the hand that feeds it out of spite.  I wouldn't allow it to come to that, if I could, and certain... behaviors needed to be curbed.  I was, in fact, the clan heir, a weighty position that would be uncontestedly mine until Mikoto bore a son.

I turned back to Daisuke-sensei, who stood with his arms crossed and his lips pinched.  "Today was fun, Daisuke-sensei!  I'll definitely be back tomorrow!"

I walked away, grinning.


	3. Chapter 3

_"Uchiha Purity: Infringements on the Sharingan Bloodline”_

 

_The Elders wisely decreed centuries ago that no outsiders were to be brought into the Clan without permission._

 

Lie.  The Elders only began limiting who we could marry at the Founding of the Village, about 70 years ago. 

 

_This is a just and necessary practice.  The Warring States Period saw many vicious attempts to eradicate the Clan’s future, though it was easy to see when our enemies went this route:  When a scythe is swung in a field, it is impossible to miss where the harvest will fall.  However, when a wild oak scatters his acorns, or when a dandelion blows in the wind, no one can know when and where the seed will take root.  It is thus with the Sharingan bloodline._

 

Truth.  Unfortunately.  Now that Konoha could study genetics, the Uchiha theoretically could have had ours genes tested to see what one needed to develop the Sharingan, if it even had anything to do with genetics at all:  Some lines were documented, unbroken for generations, and dominated by maternal-Sharingan descent.  Others were paternally-determined, and others yet were completely random.  Mikoto came from one of those maternal-descent lines; her mother Ran had died young on a courier mission, but had also been a purportedly strong Jounin.  It was impossible to know with Fugaku.  His father, like all the Clan Heads since shortly before Tajima, was descended from one of those long lines of paternal-descent.  His mother, though—my paternal grandmother, Uchiha Tatsuki—had been Mikoto’s great-aunt.  Tatsuki-obasama and Ran-obasama were both part of the matrilineal Uchiha, and very strong ninja with very strong spirits. 

 

Here, how strong a person became and their internal determination were important: In unevenly matched pairs, children could end up with far more similarities to one parent than the other.  Tatsuki-obasama had not wanted to marry Daiki and had been forced to retire temporarily through her entire first pregnancy, causing great resentment.  Her chakra never merged with Uncle Eichii’s in the womb, and while he did not suffer from it, evidently he was his father reborn, in bearing, looks, and chakra signature.  Once an Heir had been secured, she had been reinstated through both of her following pregnancies with Uncle Hiroaki and Fugaku and allowed full use of her chakra once more.  I imagine that the hope had been that Eichii would continue the patrilineal Sharingan.  Unfortunately, both he and Hiroaki had perished, leaving behind Fugaku who was more of an even-blend.  What that meant for Sharingan-inheritance, no one knew, especially since Mikoto had remained a fully-active Jounin throughout her entire pregnancy with me.

 

As a matter of fact, when she went into labor, she hadn’t even been in Konoha.  She’d been a few miles outside of Fire Country, kunai deep in a man’s guts and nursing a stab wound in the back after an infiltration gone wrong when her water broke.  Mikoto sliced through three teams of Kumo chunin with me crowning, and then the Yellow Flash himself had forced her to calm down while he took them back to Konoha so I could be born in a hospital instead of in a body-strewn battlefield.

 

Ninja inheritance was weird.  Sometimes. Most of the time even, chakra behaved in a scientific enough kind of way that it was easy to forget that I could literally walk over water like Jesus Christ without even breaking a sweat.  Chakra was energy, but it was also magic and it wreaked havoc in thousands of seen and unseen ways.

 

I shook my head and continued reading.  Trying to ponder genetics always gave me a headache here, since acquired traits were routinely passed on.

 

The essay continued on, with bigoted and gross observations and statements about other clans and women in general.  That was another way I knew this document was newer—historically, since the Clan had often been divided in three parts among the patrilineal, matrilineal, and random inheritance lineages, women in the Clan were respected.  However, since maybe two or three generations before the Founding, the matrilineal lines had been disappearing.  After, with the mandatory recruitment of Uchiha men to fight in wars, the patrilineal lines had been cut away as well.  With that in mind, I would put this document at about…fifty years old.  Oh, the names were likely correct, since the Clan had kept track of, eliminated or incorporated any ill-begotten offspring before they could form their own clans, but the purposefully-dated and tattered opening essay was just that— _purposefully_ tattered and dated.  Not actually that old at all.

 

_Here is a record of those who have tried to steal the Sharingan bloodline for their own.  Senju Tomoko…_

And so on and so forth until I came to the latest known attempted-case of bloodline theft, dated about forty years ago.  Akiyama Yumi.

 

Interesting.  I shut the book and went on my way for the day.

 

0-0-0-0

 

"You're going to be a big sister, Shizuha." 

 

Of course.  Well, canon waited for no one, I supposed.  I stared closely at Mikoto, who had slowly softened over the past three years, the harsh angles of her shinobi-fit form rounding into something deceivingly soft and accentuated by the formless frocks and pale aprons she now wore.  I had suspected for a few weeks, months back, when Mikoto became more snappish, more prone to near-tears at my coldness and occasional savagery, and known for sure when the seamstress came to fit me for a new kimono maybe 2 months back, under the guise of celebrating my 5th birthday.  Her entire wardrobe had been switched out for larger sizes during that time.  Like I wouldn’t notice.  It was a fun tactic, I guess, that probably would have worked on someone who was actually five, but I had known various women who’d been pregnant in my previous life.

 

She was definitely nervous, that much I could tell, even if her tone was calm and her dark eyes were like pools of water, deep and still.  I didn't know quite what it was that alerted me to her feelings—perhaps it was simply familiarity, perhaps it was her own lapse in keeping up a strong guard within her own home, in front of her only child.  Mikoto was genuinely strong, and not afraid of me despite everything.  I disliked her intensely for that fact often.

 

"I'm sure Itachi-chan will be even more of a terror than I am, Hahaue-sama."

 

She looked very stiff.  I smiled and primly continued to eat my breakfast.  Mikoto was a solid 6 months along now.  I knew full well she was carrying a boy, a male to supplant my position as Heir.

 

Mikoto and Fugaku were still, after all these years, not so good with children and willfully blind when it came to me. 

 

Itachi-chan would be mine.  Until he came though, I needed to continue to train.  I finished my bowl of rice and eggs, said my thanks, and disappeared without a sound.

 

I was the Heir, after all.  It wouldn't be fitting for me to be so close to going to the Academy without at least mastering all of the basic jutsu taught well beforehand, and my reserves were large enough already to easily handle the strain of shunshin and the replacement technique, not to mention basic clones.

 

I had done a good thing years before because by beginning my chakra training early, I was now far ahead of my peers' chakra reserves.  That was why, I had come to think, the real reason why tailed beast needed to be stored in very young children or infants.  Their reserves were small but malleable, like so many other parts of infants.  By messing with my chakra from my cradle, I had inadvertently given myself a boon.

 

It meant that I could perform various E-rank and D-rank jutsu with absolute ease.  It meant that I was now an adult of the clan, now permitted to wear the high-collared shirt in a pale, complimentary teal that set off my eyes and made a striking combination against my tanned skin.  The Grand Fireball wasn't useful, really, since none of my spars were lethal and the Uchiha district was wooden and very flammable, but fireballs were so chakra-consuming that performing the technique was helping me expand my reserves even more.

 

Plus, I had to admit that it was inexcusably tiring.  So tiring that the first time I did the jutsu, in secret, I'd had to rest for 2 days.  I'd told Mikoto I had a cold.  Chakra exhaustion was similar enough that she did not question me.

 

The Grand Fireball was a different kind of jutsu from the rest of my small repertoire.  My chakra liked becoming fire far more than it tolerated powering my muscles for a lightning-quick burst of speed or switching my body with a nearby log.  It itched to be expelled in huge puffs of flame, as big as a house, to burn and purify rotted branches more thoroughly than a sharp kunai could...

 

But the technique was far too damaging and large for that, and it was inexcusably stupid to use a Fireball when a kunai would do a more efficient job.

 

I went to the lake to swim for a bit, keeping a thin layer of chakra over my body and my clothes to keep the water from directly touching me.  The sensation was akin to swimming covered in saran wrap, only far itchier and positively loathsome.  After so long, I couldn’t tell if it was the OCD making me want to pick my skin off or the chakra that thrummed, forever held at bay solely by my mind.

 

The water helped, as it was fire's natural enemy.  I didn't have a doubt what my chakra nature was.  If only I'd been born with a Water chakra type.  Maybe then my chakra would have soothed instead of burned me from the inside.  Or, it could have drowned me.  I breathed out and cleared my head.  Time was a commodity and I was wasting it on stupidity,

 

I lay face down in the water, breathing from small, chakra enclosed air pockets around my face while forcing my chakra through my tenketsu, just like always.  I didn't hesitate to send the energy around my brain, probing at the locked chakra there.  Not yet.  But soon.  The annoying little burst of warm chakra brushed on my senses from close by.  I disliked company.

 

I flipped, startling the small boy staring at me into falling face first into the water and flailing around till his hands found purchase on the wooden dock.  I stood on the water, mindlessly keeping up the chakra layer that would shield me from errant drops and splashes, smiling as I called out a greeting and biting back my natural inclination.  Children were filth.  They couldn’t help themselves when they were so unformed and squishy though, and negative reinforcement yielded high-pitched shrieking and not much else.

 

"Good morning, Shisui-kun."

 

He sat on the dock, still sputtering and clearing water from his mouth and nose, but when he finished that, he glared at me.  I still smiled.

 

"You did that on purpose, Shizuha-sama!" 

 

Yes.  Absolutely correct.  Utterly spot on.  I cleared the considerable distance in an enhanced leap, leading in a crouch in front of Shisui-kun, smiling so widely my eyes shut.  "You know I'm not available any weekday until at least noon, Shisui-kun."

 

8 hours a day with other humans.  No more than 4 of which could be spent actually speaking. That was my limit.

 

But I needed to work on that anyway, didn't I?  The academy days were 8 hours long, with no chances for real solitude or self-reflection.

 

-i didn't want to learn to cooperate, they couldn't make me, I wouldn't I wouldn't I wanted to be ALONE and i felt like SCREAMING-

 

I breathed softly.  The tenketsu in my brain were like crumbling, weakened boards and the unstable chakra behind them was pushing against them, demanding to be let out.

 

The Sharingan induces mental instability.   ** _No_**.  The Uchiha are particularly susceptible to mental illness due to our genetics alone, the Curse of Hatred amplifies that effect, and the Sharingan is just the cherry on top.  Who wouldn't be driven off the deep end by recalling life's worst moments in crystal clarity?  Chakra made everything worse.  Reincarnation was wrong when you could remember your previous life.  Move past it.

 

"Hey, hey, Shizu-sama, what're you thinkin' so hard?  Are you making up a new jutsu?  Can I see it?"

 

I patted the rough, short curls very softly.  Shisui was somewhat tolerable because he looked kind of like me (more than I looked like Mikoto or Fugaku at any rate).  If I wasn't the outlier, then it made me less prone to scrutiny and decreased the need for drastic demonstrations.  That was always good.

 

"You know what would make me talk to you more, Shisui-kun?" I said, smiling more gently now.  I had my eyes trained on those similar, coarse curls under my hand.

 

"What?"

 

I leaned closer.  "Grow your hair out just like mine.  And go and learn how to do all sorts of braids.  If you can learn how to do tight braids very close to the scalp within the next two weeks, I'll definitely make time to see you for 3 hours or so once a week."

 

His eyes shined with determination. 

 

"I won't fail you, Shizuha-sama!" He stood, bowed and ran off.

 

My sigh turned into a series of puffed flames roughly the size of small boats.  My throat and lips wanted to crack and peel under the heat, but the thin chakra barrier protected them well.

 

I continued to go through my daily training in solitude, like I preferred.

 

0-0-0-0

 

“I really would like to know where you’ve learned about some of this subject matter Shizuha.”

 

Fugaku made want to break things whenever he put on this stern, Clan Head persona and directed it at him.  I didn’t like being commanded.  I loathed being forced to do anything, especially answering inconvenient or stupid questions.

 

“I have no clue what you’re talking about.” I lied glibly, my gaze skirting over the thick stack of paper in his hands.  It was better than shrieking unintelligibly and attempting to burn his office down.

 

“If any of the Elders were to find out that you indulge in such…vulgarity,” I cut him off before he could continue with that.  The Elders could eat my _whole entire ass_.

 

“They would blame you and Hahaue-sama for corrupting me, and attempt to have one of their lackeys dissuade me from claiming my title.  Again.  And then I would be forced to take drastic action.  Again.”

 

It brought me joy to see the barely-contained wince and the subtle flinch in his face.

 

What Fugaku didn’t know was that I was simply making life easier for myself in the future.  And I hadn’t done anything illegal.  It was my right as an Uchiha to claim the spoils of battle with one of my clansmen, and I didn’t trust the Elder’s own security enough to believe that the Unnamed wouldn’t have his perfectly harvestable Sharingan carved and stolen from his cold carcass.

 

Like we even needed to be processed at a morgue.  We were _Fire_.  We burned at death, and housed the ashes in our family shrines if the deceased was honorable and scattered them to the winds if they were not.  Attacking me and formally challenging me to a duel on the grounds that I was a bastard was slanderous and rude, but more importantly, was treachery.  And real Uchiha did not suffer traitors.

 

So, if the Elders did know about my song lyrics, they would know better than to say shit to me.  Most of jounin were fighting the war, leaving them genin and chunin as pawns.  The only jounin left were on my side because I publically and loudly supported the idea of the Village.  That’s not to say that some of our chunin were weak; The Village simply didn’t like to allow ninja who were so blatantly unpatriotic the chance for any control over its governing or the next generation of soldiers, which they would have as jounin.  Of course, we had our own force of special-jounin forces that made up the upper echelons of the police force, but Fugaku had iron-clad control over his men.  That was one area, surprisingly, that he wasn’t a total loser in.

 

Fugaku clutched the papers in a white-knuckled grip, but his face was as stony and still as the ancient walls that sectioned our Clan off from the Village proper.

 

“It makes me personally uncomfortable that you know so many sexual euphemisms and insults, and I find the ease with which you glorify violence and drugs—some of which I had to learn about from our spies because they aren’t here in Fire Country—extremely worrying.”

 

Ugh.  Was this goddamn asshole really trying to pull the feelings card?  And what the fuck was he talking about, ‘glorifying violence’?  Writing down and modifying the lyrics to Fredo Santana’s “Gun Violence” was worse than the thought of sending me to the Academy, where I would literally learn how to kill people?  And objectively speaking, Travis Porter wasn’t even that dirty of a group.  It’s not like I’d written down the lyrics to “My Neck My Back”, and even if I had, everyone knew that any shinobi could be called on to use their bodies in any way the Village required, and there was no shame in it.  What the fuck was wrong with him?

 

I imagine my disgust and awe at his double standards must have been clear on my face.  For many things, I didn’t attempt to mask my contempt of Fugaku.  I thought he was an inept Clan Head, his one or two successes aside, and I knew that under his leadership, the Uchiha would eventually be eliminated.  It wasn’t necessarily fair of me to hold this Fugaku accountable for future mistakes, but it was because of his demonstrated weakness and incompetence that I had to directly deal with greedy, power-hungry schemes myself.

 

It was no wonder Itachi ended up the way he did.  This Clan was a damned viper-pit on its best days, and Fugaku simply wasn’t strong enough to shield his family from the venom.

 

Well.  No one would fuck with me that way.

 

I’d made sure of it.

 

“I’m not doing anything unsafe or illegal.  Please give me my notes back.”

 

Grudgingly, he released the papers back onto the desk.  I snatched them away and quickly exited his office.

 

Humming quietly to myself, I made my way to my rooms in peace, muscles sore and chakra barely circulating through my body, letting my annoyance fade.  I plopped down onto some cushions and exchanged the messy notes in my hands for a mass of papers covered in characters and red slashes of ink.  I settled down to write.

 

'Madara-dono and the Curse of Hatred; How Sharingan Stupidity Shredded the Uchiha Name.'

 

My clan elders still refused to really acknowledge me as anything more than a sort of placeholder.  I was not the real Heir to them, just like Fugaku was only barely a clan head.  I’d _proven_ myself, and yet they wouldn’t stand aside and accept my claim.

 

'Madara-dono was lucky, first and foremost, that his clan elders fully supported his rise to clan head, despite his young age.  He 'looked like an Uchiha', had a penis, and was already silent and stoic.  Unfortunately for his elders, he had a love-hate relationship with the Senju, especially their young, sexy Heir, Hashirama.  Madara-dono quite admired the First Hokage's "lustrous hair" when it whipped through the wind as they lost themselves in "the pleasures of youth", however the hell you want to heteronormify that.'

 

I frowned and crossed out the last clause.

 

'As such, when the random booty calls became less and less frequent after Hashirama married, the need for peace between the Senju and Uchiha' became more pronounced.  Madara-dono hate-fucked at least 4 pretty Uzumaki shinobi before murdering them in cold blood, and, to his shame, signed off over a dozen assassination missions intended to fell an entire generation of the clan.  Madara-dono was quite unhappy that Hashirama was so pleased with his new wife.'

 

I stared at my writing for a moment and underlined that entire section in red.  I...wouldn't be able to salvage any if that really.  Oh well.  The village at large didn't even acknowledge the overtly and obviously sexual relationship between Madara and Hashirama.  They made it a habit for the first year of the village's construction to fuck in the new onsen while Mito and Senju Touka went at it in the women's side.

 

I lightly crossed out the sentences with a red x and started anew further down the page.  

 

'Uchiha Clan Leadership Disputes: Power Struggles Among Clan Heads, Elders, and Members 100 P.F through 20 A.F.'

 

That was considerably drier and far less likely to get me in hot water with Naoko-san.  She didn’t appreciate the MadaHashi fanfic I’d placed in the Archives a few months back and didn’t cook me any food for a _week_.  I mean, I could cook, but I was always so damn tired and impatient…Or more accurately, a spoiled lazy ass.  Meh.  No shame in my game.

 

Since I'd become an adult by clan standards, Naoko-san had began her secondary function of making sure I was more than familiar with clan history.  She knew well that I had been reading our dated clan tomes for years, and so instead of beginning with basic reading, as was traditional, she made me write essays on various topics.  Normally, the parameters of the essays were simple: Naoko-san gave me a topic, say, how Uchiha Madara-dono's actions as Clan Head could be connected to other historical Clan Heads, write as much as I needed to prove I understood our history, and turn the resulting monstrosity in within a week in my best calligraphy with sources attached.

 

These essays would eventually be compiled within a greater set of my journals if I ever made it to Clan Head.  Naoko-san hadn't been stupid when I was young and had always directed me towards different texts when I was younger and learning how to read; Now I knew it was because she wanted my own thoughts and ideas, not copied work, as any sane ninja-in-training would write if they had access to pre-written essays.

 

Honestly, I could vomit out a thousand words in MLA format in 2 hours.  Plus, unlike so many of my other essays in my first life, I had actually read the source material the essays were meant to be based on.

 

They weren't a waste of time, though they were tedious; I needed excellent penmanship, and painstakingly writing these essays by hand was a good way to gain it.  This was also, I had found, another way of developing my chakra.  The all-consuming focus and concentration was useful for expanding my ever-growing reservoir.

 

As I guessed, writing the draft of the essay took about 2 hours, give or take a few minutes.  I had another 6 days to edit the writing and transcribe it in kanji into a scroll.  Cake work, really, even if the kanji would be a bitch.

 

That finished, it was time for dinner.  Tonight, I would be dining alone with Naoko-san, and after, she would either help me if I needed assistance with any of my various tasks or leave me in peace.

 

Routine was nice.

 

0-0-0-0

 

I tossed and turned beneath the covers, feeling restricted and hot even as I gradually kicked away all of my coverings.  How many days did I have to cement my place as Heir in the minds of my fellow Uchiha?  I had completed the first major step by mastering the Grand Fireball Jutsu but how else could I make them see me and only me as the true Heir?

 

I rolled out of the futon and began pacing.  I'd consulted numerous Clan Head journals and diaries but none had ever needed to fight for the position as I did; the Uchiha had never been led by a woman, and if the Clan Elders had their way, I wouldn't change that.

 

I had known, I think, what I would need to do for several years now.  The question was, how would I get away with it?  

 

I went to the backyard and practiced till my fingers bled and my muscles screamed, the itch and burn beneath my skin fading to nothing as I forced chakra from my body while I moved.  The sun peeked up over the horizon as I lay heaving bile and wheezing with exhaustion against a blooming sakura tree.

 

I decided I needed to begin doing some community outreach. 

 

0-0-0-0

 

Konoha didn't have an old folks home per se, but during the day, old people tended to gather together in certain parks when children were at school and working age people were busy.  I looked very out of place during those hours, but I wanted people to begin to recognize my face.  

 

"What a thoughtful child!" a cheerfully smiling woman said, her white hair pulled back into a traditional chignon.  Not quite a shimada—her age and traditional bearing would have made that particular style inappropriate—but the style was quite demure and elegant nonetheless.  I kept on my gracious smile affixed to my face, as I always did when dealing with the elderly.

 

"Would you be a dear and—oh!  Thank you very much!" I handed her a steaming cup of tea and some macaroons.

 

I beamed.  "It's no trouble, Akiyama-san!" 

 

Akiyama-san was a bit dead behind the eyes, sharp and cold, but she made a successful effort to blend in with the less experienced retired shinobi and civilians around her.  I could appreciate that. 

 

I was truly learning a lot from Akiyama-san, and it felt good to learn something that wasn't blatantly loaded with Uchiha propaganda.  I still had a full month before Itachi was born, too.  

 

Akiyama-san finished her macaroons and tea, and tidily defeated her opponent in a game of go.  Her brown, deceptively soft eyes glittered like diamonds as she signaled for me to pack the tea set up.

 

We walked directly to a field not 10 minutes from the park, and she set me to picking right away.

 

As I was pulling up a plant, Akiyama-san ghosted next to me.

 

"Remember our deal," she whispered, staring intently at me, though her face held nothing but kindness if anyone else was watching.  It wasn't likely.

 

"Hai.  I’ll give Gokuro-ojisama the proper rights," I confirmed.  She smiled.

0-0-0-0

 

I was required to stay within the confines of the clan for a whole week while everyone dealt with what seemed a plague.  Every adult clan member—including me—fell sick.  So sick that the weakest among us never quite fully recovered.  Thankfully, there were no fatalities save for the unexpected passing of Uchiha Gokuro-sama, and within a week of the cessation of our mandatory containment, Itachi-chan came into the world, so quietly and obviously Uchiha, unlike me in all ways.  

 

He truly was a darling, and he smelled sweet, like all clean babies, all wrinkled and pink with a full head of dark hair and big, brown knowing eyes.  An old soul, if there ever was one.  I snickered at the thought.

 

As I stared at him, I remembered his canon fate.  Little Itachi-chan resting peacefully in my arms would one day slaughter the clan to the youngest infant, save for our yet-born baby brother.  Danzo wouldn't use this fleshy, soft little human to complete his dirty work.  This clan...for all of its flaws, its arrogance and excessive pride and lies and Hatred and festering discontent...it would be mine.  And I would allow no one to take it from me.  Itachi's face came into focus so much more sharply as I thought.

 

"Shizuha?" Mikoto asked carefully, from some feet behind me.  My lips pulled into an even bigger smile and I handed my brother back to her.  Her eyes widened and she clutched the baby to her chest, as though I would harm my own blood.  My eventual savior, when these eyes failed me.

 

"You should be more scared of him than me, mother." I turned to the closest open window and jumped.

 

I enrolled myself in the Academy that very day.

 

0-0-0-0

 

Within the week, I blew through the prerequisite testing, and then through the mandatory ten semesters to get placed into the graduating class.  If I was really efficient, I could have gone through all the courses and been put into any genin team that had lost a member recently, of which there were many due to the ongoing war, but that would ultimately make it harder on myself.  I preferred to start with green little genin, who had never committed face to face murder and who could be molded into what I needed in a team.  I would have at least two months to learn about my possible teammates this way as well as learn how to remain polite and social for more than four hours at a time.

 

I began my first day when Itachi-chan was nine days old.  He was awake when I slipped out, and I stopped to wish him a good day and kiss him goodbye.  "Te quiero, mi cariñito,  _I love you_." I whispered into the downy fuzz of his hair.

 

It would be confusing for Itachi-chan, learning three languages at once.  I knew he was a genius, but it would delay his speech development and hopefully allow him to learn to mask his abilities.  Itachi-chan would never not be a genius, barring a traumatic head injury or something like that, but the clan didn't need to know so soon that they had a far more exploitable little prodigy on their hands, a young, shortsighted and unfortunately unstable little boy who could become an unwilling pawn and stay that way for the rest of his life.

 

(I wouldn't let them use this baby against me.  I'd bite their throats out with my teeth, tear them limb from limb with my bare hands, claim their eyes and make them MINE, this clan was MINE by right and MINE alone I would not let them usurp me from MY PLACE-)

 

My eyes bled into the red pinwheels of the Sharingan so easily now, at the slightest provocation, tinting my thoughts and sharpening my vision.  I closed off their chakra input and my vision dulled again.

 

I left the compound through the front gate, my long hair bound in tight braids.  The teal, wide collar shirt was the one I used for ceremony, to make a point, not one of the more practical ones with a narrower collar.  I'd pierced my ears on the day Itachi-chan came, and a pair of large jade magatama hung from them, matching the various gems beaded through my hair and the larger one resting at my neck.  My pants were black and closely fitted, like leggings but of a sturdier material and lined with mesh, leading down to standard, black sandals.

 

Were the hair and jewelry really necessary?  Not really.  But...I wanted to look like what I was.  An Heir to one of the most significant founding Clans, nearly a princess like the already renowned Tsunade-hime, blood of Madara himself if not as directly as Tsunade was related to the Shodaime.  But I wanted more than that image, more than the reputation and look of a rich and powerful princess.  I wanted to look like a queen.  Composed and strong, powerful politically and on the battlefield.  I craved taking my place one day as Clan Head, smiting my enemies without care, becoming powerful enough that no one could stop me.

 

The Academy entrance was big and confusing since it was merely one part of the Village’s bureaucratic heart, but I had an insider.

 

Uchiha Obito walked several steps behind me, looking extremely cautious and somewhat scared.  Poor boy.  I smiled at him kindly and attempted to make conversation.

 

"Ne, Obito-nisan, isn't it cool that we'll be in the same class together?" I felt more than saw him shudder and heard him gulp.  I sidled right next to him, smiling prettily.

 

"...If, if you think so, Shizuha-sama." He stuttered, much more quietly than I normally heard him speaking.  I nearly had to channel chakra to my ears to hear anything at all.  I wanted to frown, but the poor thing might piss himself and make me late.

 

"You aren't attempting to remove from my position as Clan Heir, are you Obito-nisan?" Obito had stopped walking by then, noting the nearly empty side alley we were in, his face paling under those ridiculously ugly goggles.  What a fucking joke.

 

A part of me scoffed at the thought that this sad, skinny little weakling could ever bring the world to its knees.  But we were all training to be ninja.  Appearances were meant to be deceiving.

 

"O-o-of course not, Shizuha-sama!  I'm not, I, I couldn't possibly—I’m at the bottom of my class, Shizuha-sama!  No one would ever even think to choose me over you as Clan Head!"

 

I patted his shoulder companionably.  "Then you don't have anything to fear, do you, Obito-nisan?" He shook his head vigorously in agreement.  

 

"Let's keep walking!  You don't want to make me late for my first day, do you?" He really would have something to fear if he damaged my first chance to make an impression.

 

We made it to the Academy without further incident, and Obito lead me to our still mostly-empty classroom.  The Sensei wasn't there yet, so I decided to introduce myself to Nohara Rin before Obito ruined my reputation with the girl.

 

"Oh, you didn't tell me you had a good friend in the class, Obito-nisan!" He stiffened, but introduced me properly.  Good boy.

 

"Rin-chan.  This is my cousin Uchiha Shizuha-sama." I could feel how badly he wanted me to leave, which hurt me a little.  I'd never done anything to him, specifically.  Well.  There was that time I'd given a lecture about tardiness...

 

I inclined my head slightly as Rin-chan bowed in greeting, as always, smiling.  "And you'd be Nohara Rin-chan, I'm guessing?"

 

She nodded happily, no doubt thinking that Obito must have told me about her, which was unexpected for an Uchiha, even one as un-Uchiha as Obito.  Rin-chan wasn't wrong; I only knew about her because I watched her die.  Obito was cheerful and generally trusting, but not dumb enough to tell his sometimes bullying agemates within the clan that he'd done something so plebian as befriend a little civilian-born girl.

 

We made small talk for a little while.  Rin-chan complimented my hair (I preened) and I told her I thought the stripes on her cheeks were cute.  Obito did not relax or contribute to the conversation.

 

I ended that exchange after a few minutes, promising to speak with them again during our break.  The classroom was steadily filling up, though few people were sitting yet so I went to claim a seat in the center front row.

 

I deeply disliked children.  I tried to look friendly anyway.

 

(i wanted OUT i wanted to GO HOME to be ALONE i  **ITCHED**  my skin prickled my eyes  ** _BURNED_** -)

 

My eyes never even finished spinning before I forcibly retracted my chakra from the ocular area.  I breathed deeply, and concentrated on the blunt, even edges of my nails, mentally projecting various colors onto them to keep myself from plucking out my eyeballs.

 

The long minutes passed and I wasn't bothered.  No one came to talk to me, though I did get a few strange looks.  I wasn't even the most brightly colored person in the room, honestly, and since I was rather large for a five year old, I wasn't all that far behind in growth, either.  This was wartime—sudden transfers from other classes were very common, as the Village needed every new body the Academy could throw at the war effort.

 

The lessons were boring.  I committed them to memory in seconds using my Sharingan and spent the rest of the class looking at my potential teammates.

 

I had given myself enough time to take the highest rank in the class, but I knew that I wouldn't end up on Obito's team: The Village wasn't dumb enough to waste two Sharingan users on a team, even if Obito hadn't actually developed his yet.  Plus, class ranking wasn't all that played into team assignments.  If someone in the class was, say, already a burgeoning water-ninjutsu user, and skilled, they would be put on my team.  We would also probably get someone without any real specialty, who would be pushed into becoming the squad medic.  Unless, of course, the Village really was sexist enough to assume that would be my role owing to my gender.  I rather doubted that though—they knew I had mastery of the basic ninjutsu, developed taijutsu, and a Sharingan.  They had to assume I was a frontline fighter in the making.  Plus, arrogant, mainline Uchiha didn’t become _medics_.  It wasn’t dignified.

 

As I idly scanned my books, I looked around at my classmates.  These kids, some of them at least, would become the adult cast members of Naruto.  Weird.  I saw Gai with his bowl haircut, a young Kurenai and Asuma, among others.  The feeling was thoroughly disconcerting.

 

"Uchiha Shizuha-san.  You are new to this class, but you must pay attention if you want to graduate and become a ninja." 

 

Daisuke-sensei gripped his nose from his spot up at the front, far from the no-name chunin closer to me.  I stared at the chunin for a moment, trying to feel out how much chakra he had.  I was not impressed.

 

Well.  My Sharingan was already activated, right?  And covered by a Henge, too.  Here went nothing.

 

"I am paying attention, Sensei."

 

One of the cool things about the Sharingan was how easy it made certain shinobi arts.

 

He blinked a few times, and frowned.  

 

"Apologies, Shizuha-sama."

 

I smiled.  Daisuke-sensei did not look happy from his corner.  Oh well.

 

0-0-0-0

 

I spat blood from my mouth straight at Fugaku's feet.  My tongue poked through a hole in my row of top teeth.  Oh well.  It was a baby tooth anyway, the pain of that was nothing compared to the way my chakra burned behind my eyes, where it was shoring up behind an artificial dam.  My vision was dull, compared to what I'd grown used to in the few weeks I had my Sharingan, and my normal, grey eyes felt half blind in comparison.

 

"I'll have them unsealed when I see evidence of actual regret or repentance, Shizuha." I hate him I hated him I hated him I hated him I hated him I hated him I _HATED HATED_ **_HATED HIM_**! 

 

I breathed and smiled, my chakra slowly beginning to burn through the dam already, the same way it'd been burning at me from the inside for years, slowly but surely destroying me.  

 

"You know this won't last, Fugaku-sama." He stiffened at my voice, composed despite the punishing spar with men four and five times my age, my blood still dripping, my body covered in gashes and bruises.  Please.  Like I hadn't done worse to myself.

 

"Just go, Shizuha."

 

I went.


	4. Chapter 4

"This was a mistake, Fugaku."

 

Those were Mikoto's tones.  Flat, emotionless.  My ninja mother.  She was very worried, I thought, though I wondered why.

 

Itachi?!

 

I tried to sit up, but my body was unresponsive.  I heard beeps though, felt my heart rate increase along with my breathing.

 

The itch was muted and my senses were dulled to the extreme, but I could hear and it felt like my eyes were open, even if I couldn't see anything.

 

My chakra was...was it bound?  Why was it flowing so sluggishly?  My tenketsu.  They were...clogged, or something.  No.  Thinned.  The openings were smaller.  How was I supposed to get my chakra where I needed it if the channels were so constricted?  

 

I was drugged.

 

Apparently my intolerance for narcotics had manifested itself in my new body.  Well.  Maybe if I cycled a bit of chakra?  It couldn't be too different from walking on water and channeling chakra over my skin, right?  Water, like blood, was always moving, so if I cycled a bit of purifying, burning chakra, it would get rid of whatever was in my bloodstream, right?

 

It was  _hard_.  My chakra didn't want to respond to me, was almost as stubborn as my body, but I was slowly forcing open my tenketsu.  Bit by bit.  

 

I had to visualize, very specifically, where my veins and arteries were.  I felt for my pulse, felt where the blood was pumping out.  And then, felt an I.V in my arm.  If only I could have screamed.

 

I sent a...bubble, I guess?  The medicine dripping in was different feeling from my blood, so I tried to let that through while letting the medicine accumulate.  After a few minutes, the drips stopped, but I began to feel drowsy and tired again.  I fought that feeling.

 

My senses returned to me after an indiscriminate amount of time.  I was alone though—I couldn't feel any chakra signatures at all, but I didn't hear breathing or the vague sensation of being stared at.  I flexed my fingers and then my arms, making sure there weren't any restraints.  Then, with my free arm, I pulled the bandage off my eyes.

 

Clarity.  I breathed.  Dying sunlight streamed in from the window, casting shadows in the evening light.  It was maybe 8:30 in the evening.

 

The window was not locked.  I stood, careful to keep my I.V from ripping out, keeping the bit of built up medicine enclosed in my chakra.  I pushed it out, along with the I.V, opened the window, and jumped to my freedom.

 

Chakra was so great sometimes.  The Sharingan was even better.

 

I raced along the rooftops, wearing a hospital-issued pajama set made of a material that felt like thick but soft paper.

 

"Shizuha-sama!" 

 

Nope nope nope nope, just gotta-

 

Substitution with a roof tile, Substitution with another roof tile a few yards down, JUMP, SHIT, DUCK, KEEPING DUCKING, run run run run--

 

Hide, dim the chakra, dim it, compress compress compress, fade into the wall. Don't look at me, Don't notice me, I'm still running on the roof, It's true, I'm barely an Academy Student, I'm--

 

Safe.

 

I kept the genjutsu up, on guard for another 5 minutes, counting the seconds and steadying my heartbeat and my pulse as my chakra pooled in my eyes, straining the further away they got.  I was close enough to a well-off residential area, so I grabbed a grey t-shirt and black shorts from a clothesline, leaving one of my jade beads in payment.  It would leave a trace, obviously, but I wasn't looking to really remain anonymous for long.  I took out all of my braids, pocketed my beads, deactivated my Sharingan, and let my now free hair curl wildly around my face and down my back.

 

I went through the same person's recycling to find a newspaper and sighed in relief.  It'd only been a day.  I thought it couldn't have been long or otherwise my muscles would have weakened or something, but I was glad that worry had turned out worthless.  Like I thought, that block on my Sharingan was far from permanent.  It'd been literally 11 days before I broke through it, only my chakra may have, possibly, caused a tiny bit of backlash and almost fried my brain.

 

I activated my Sharingan and gleefully noted the 2 pinwheels.  Nice.

 

Suffering paid, in this world.

 

I wandered around, trying to be the last places the police expected me to be, which was the same civilian residential areas.  I was a Clan brat through and through.  They had no reason to think I would come here, plus the Uchiha tended to stay where they were needed more, in the shinobi dense areas mostly full of apartment complexes.  Civilians generally didn’t need military police to keep them from getting too rowdy.

 

It was a bit late, but not too late, so I had to be a bit more vigilant about staying hidden.  My reserves weren't drained, but they were far from full.  I needed to eat and sleep a natural sleep.

 

Maybe...hmmmm.

 

Would they expect me to take refuge right outside of the Uchiha district?

 

I grinned.  Probably not.

 

Obito's apartment it was, then.

 

0-0-0-0

 

"Hi."

 

Obito shrieked and dropped his meager bag of groceries, a few apples and instant ramen cups spilling onto the shabby carpet.  The noise was only momentary as I snatched an apple and jammed it into his mouth as I closed the door with a quiet click.

 

I led him to the couch as he stared at me in horror.  Sitting him down on the couch, I peered into his eyes.  They were a deep brown, but I could see that the pupils were barely pinpricks.  I frowned and patted his hair awkwardly.

 

"Ne, this is ok, right Obito-niisan?  I just need a place to hide for a little while, is that ok?" I tried to modulate my tone into something less falsely cheerful and more comforting than usual.  My chakra wasn't flooding to my eyes, so it couldn't be the Sharingan that was scaring him so badly.

 

"Right, Obito-niisan?" I repeated gently but insistently.  He re-stiffened so tautly his body almost seemed to quiver.  Yikes.

 

"O-o-o-of c-"

 

He stopped at my minute frown and flung himself onto the ground, groveling in dogeza.

 

Well, you reap what you sow, I guess.  I sighed.

 

"I'm not here to hurt you, Obito-niisan.  You haven't spoken directly against me, and you aren't personally offensive to me on a subconscious level even if I think your fashion choices are questionable at best and your habitual tardiness is a disgrace to the Uchiha name."

 

I kneeled down and hoisted him up by the shoulders and tapped his forehead with my fingers.  Stupefied, he blinked at me.  I actually smiled for once.

 

Obito was a good person, and not sticky like most boys his age.

 

"I'm here because I'm afraid Fugaku-sama will try to seal up my Sharingan again and I'll actually bake my brain with my own chakra trying to destroy it again.  You've been very punctual since I reprimanded you, which is more than I can say for a number of our less fortunate clansmen."

 

He flinched at that.  Stupid stupid stupid why did I have to say that and ruin everything goddAMNIT DAMN IT DAMN IT DAMN IT ALL I BURNED, IT HURTS-

 

make it stop please please please it hurts so bad I can't even scream my eyes are boiling in their sockets I feel the blood dripping down my face, I can't take it anymore, why did you do this to me, Fugaku, you're supposed to be my father and fathers care for their daughters and protect them they don't hurt them so badly it hurts so bad I want to die I want to die I want to die I want to die I want-

 

Sweet juices and coppery blood hit my tongue, my throat burning, phantom pains in my eyes, unfortunately clear memories buzzing in my head and resurrecting the sensations.  I bit into the apple, crying loudly, but successfully ate enough that the pangs in my stomach weren't so fervent.

 

"I'm really sorry but if you yell too much, Baa-chan from 208 will come up to make sure I'm ok, and I don't think you want that right now."

 

I stared dimly at his face, blood and apple juice dripping down my chin.  No time like the present, I guessed. 

 

I pulled myself onto the couch and passed out.  My dreams were...not pleasant.  

 

When I woke up at the first ray of light, I rolled off the couch with bloodshot eyes and matted hair, barefoot and haggard.  I jumped straight from the window, Sharingan blazing, my chakra ready to bubble up from my skin and burn the world to nothing more than ash.  The Uchiha managed to preserve our buildings through sheer, stubborn willpower, despite the hazardous mix of over-powered fire jutsu and old wooden houses.  If anyone so much as touched me, I would burn the fucking compound to the ground and damn the consequences.

 

There were, of course, many shouts from the chunin Uchiha patrolling the entrances, since I bypassed those entirely and continued barely skimming over the rooftops.  No one touched me and so I did not rain down fire from above.

 

Incompetent, weak-minded little pansy sack of shit, pathetic excuse of a man.  Nothing more than a fictional fuck-up who couldn't even be bothered to realize that I had goals I needed to achieve if this clan was going to survive the next 13 years.   Was gonna rip my fucking hair out and tear all my skin off if I had to keep dealing with this time-wasting  _shit_.

 

I slid the doors open in the back and went to take a cold shower, getting my hair wet enough to coat it in conditioner and then vigorously scrubbing my body until the accumulated sweat, dirt, and blood were washed away.  I finger combed my wet, matted curls until I was sure the brush wouldn't tear all of them out, brushed it through, and braided them into my crown severely as I rethreaded my beads, the tension prickling at my tender scalp.

 

I activated my Sharingan as I looked into the mirror, watching the two pinwheels spin to life.  I overchanneled on purpose and blood came out my nose, and channeled a bit more and held my head down over the sink until it began coming out of my tear ducts as well.  I looked pretty bad, even if I was clean and my hair wasn't a mess anymore.

 

I inadvertently slammed the door open and Mikoto was already outside, seemingly standing calmly even though her face visibly pinched in displeasure at the site of me.  She wasn't angry at me, I thought, but she was probably feeling some type of way with Fugaku.

 

We stood facing each other for another tense moment before she sighed and pulled a handkerchief from her pockets, but I turned and started walking before she could come near me.  Fugaku was the one who really needed to see this.  Not her.  She didn't have the power to have my Sharingan sealed again.

 

I shuddered.  Never, ever again.  Never ever.  Those horrible 11 days of having no control, of feeling crippled and blinded while the Elders grew ever more bold and gloated over my weakness…I would take us all down in a blaze of Hatred if Fugaku did this to me again, or die trying.

 

Mikoto was easily keeping up with me, of course, since she was pissed at Fugaku too.  She began to speak quietly as we rounded a corner.

 

"I won't let him have you sealed again, Shizuha," she said, a fierce strength in her voice.  I disliked these infrequent maternal displays though right now, it was probably helpful to my cause.  If Mikoto was playing the mother-ninja, then she was my ally, for now.

 

"You'll have to use force if he decides to have me sealed again, and the other Jounin of the clan would definitely uphold Fugaku-sama's will," I said.  It was feasible, probably, that Mikoto could beat Fugaku in a fight even after several years of retirement; there was a reason she'd been allowed to continue fighting while pregnant and why Fugaku wasn't forced to continue after all, even before he'd become the Clan Head.  But the Clan's other dozen or so active, Village-bound Jounin against her alone?  She'd be overwhelmed in moments, even if they wouldn't kill her, and even if they were on her side, if the Clan Head managed to make them believe the slanderous, treacherous lies about me…I was confident in my abilities against most genin and weak-willed chunin.  I was ruthless, and due to my station, allowed to severely discipline anyone who might inspire discord within the Clan and outside of it to an extent as well.  I was strong but I was _five_.  I couldn’t go up against a jounin successfully.

 

Her mouth pressed into a firm line.  "If he seals you again, you'll probably die.  It was a hasty decision, and one he only made because he didn't know about the odd qualities of your chakra."

 

What?  I stopped and turned to look at her.  That was genuinely unexpected. 

 

"What do you mean by that?  How is my chakra odd?" Mikoto stared sadly at me and held out her hand, channeling chakra until a thin, blue cloud of energy appeared.

 

"Can you do this without forcing your chakra not to burn your skin?" she asked, already knowing the answer.  I shook my head mutely.

 

"Your chakra is excessively dense and corrosive.  We never knew."

 

I stared at her.  Her eyes were wide and glassy, but she would never do something as soft as actually cry.  Would she?

 

"Regular chakra isn't supposed to hurt, Shizuha.  Fugaku always told me how much you cried when I was still active, but by the time I came back, you were sullen and wild and independent, and we never knew that your chakra was burning you from the inside out."

 

"Why is my chakra like this?" _Why me_.  No.  I knew.  I always knew.  I was an interloper, an extra, not meant to be here.  Canon wouldn't just give me a good body, let me take the place of someone who was meant to be here.  This body was never meant to be born at all, was meant to die while Mikoto was at war, maybe with her unaware that she was ever even pregnant.  Fetuses began developing the rudiments of their own chakra systems after about 12 weeks, but any of this chakra corroding the excessively delicate tissue of a growing fetus should have been deadly.  _I should have known_.

 

That was what actually hit me.  I should have _fucking_ known.

 

"Most babies with this type of chakra don't survive long outside of the womb, I bet.  The majority of fetuses with this...condition aren't viable and die before they make it too far past the second trimester.  Am I correct?"

 

She nodded.

 

Why.  Am.  I.  Here.  I'm not selfless and I don't care about keeping canon mostly the same but tweaking it with small improvements, I'm selfish and cruel and mean and possessive and I want to go  _home_ -

 

No.  No time for stupid questions.  Recalibrate and _keep going_.

 

Fugaku had to know this too, and it meant that not only had he accidentally almost killed his firstborn, he'd almost killed his firstborn miracle child who had fought all odds to even live in the first place.  He would be feeling very, very guilty and ashamed right now, I thought.  Weakling.

 

I slid his office doors open.  He was waiting, but paled when he actually looked at me.

 

"I told you your little seal wouldn't last." I tried not to sound smug about it, keeping my tone flat.  The word choice still made me sound derisive.

 

I hadn't really looked at Fugaku in long while.  The lines on his face had deepened.  His hair was still brown, but it was dull and lifeless like his skin.  He was 24 and already aging prematurely.  **Weak**.

 

"My intention wasn't to hurt you, Shizuha." He sounded deeply pained.  What a crock of shit.  I scoffed.

 

"You filthy _liar_.  I begged for a break, I felt my chakra dipping lower and lower and I couldn’t shut off my own Sharingan.  I felt your seals leaching from me and taking over part of my chakra network while you had my own kin beat me until I passed out so your sealer could take my birthright away from me.  You made my own family break official sparring protocol against me!  Don’t you dare lie to my face!"

 

"Shizuha, I didn’t intend-“

 

Intentions.  My very being seemed to recoil in disgust.  What a liar.

 

“You didn’t _intend_ for me to understand how deceitful and backstabbing you are!  You didn’t know that I’m aware of the Village’s strict rules about training and sparring because the Clan’s tutors never taught them.  You didn’t know that my control is good enough to be aware that my chakra system is being taken over because you barely know me and you have no idea what I’m capable of!  You didn’t even know that my chakra is literally poison!  You never fucking know _anything_!  But somehow, I’m supposed to seriously listen to any kind life advice you have?  I’m supposed to listen to you talk about morality!?”

 

“When you fuck up, _I_ pay the price!  I suffer, I have to maim and murder to keep what’s mine, I make up ten-fold for your weakness. Because of your weakness, I’ve been fielding off rumors that I'm some Kumo or Kiri or Ame or Iwa bastard, that I'm not the true Heir, for _years_.  I don't have the luxury of pale skin and black eyes and hair and a dick between my legs and you think I can be weak like you?  That I'll just stay lucky and live and keep my place as Heir?" I laughed, a touch hysterically and gestured in the general direction of the nursery.

 

"Already, the Elders are planning on supplanting me with my own brother!  I have my Sharingan, and mastery of the Katon, and I'll graduate one of the youngest genin in this village's history, and they plan to replace me with an infant not yet a month old!  You have to see that's why they agreed to bring you a seal master!  They would never seal the Sharingan of the person they think will inherit the Clan.  It's why they never pushed  _your_  training harder!  Who needs a strong third-son in this peaceful era when the likelihood of you ever inheriting is so low?  Why create the possibility of a successful rebellion ever happening?"

 

Both Mikoto and Fugaku were pale now because obviously, they didn’t expect me to have realized any of this which was sad.  I’m almost completely sure that original Itachi was just as aware as I was, despite being an actual child.  I wasn't finished, though.

 

"Do you think, even for a second, that I am safe here?  That my future is assured?  I hope you had the sense not to tell anyone about my chakra.  I've had to prove for years that despite your lackluster career, you haven't bred a talentless little _weakling_.  If they sense any weakness, they'll have Itachi installed as Heir Apparent in an instant and then they'll _take him from you._ " 

 

"That hasn't happened in many, many years, Shizuha." Ah Mikoto, ever the voice of reason and calm.  I snapped my gaze toward her.

 

"When is the last time someone so unlikely took leadership of the Clan?  A few generations ago, it wouldn't have been unexpected for Fugaku-sama's older brother to immediately send him on a suicide mission, to help cement his spot and prevent the grasping Elders from using him as an opportunity.  Instead, the Clan is left with you and me as Clan Head and Heir.  Everyone knows that I was never, ever supposed to inherit anything other than, perhaps, a strong husband to breed babies with and that small house we used to live in. We were meant to be used, pushed aside, and forgotten."

 

I shook my head vehemently as I thought.  I didn’t know if it was the fabled foresight of the Sharingan or my own vivid imagination, but I could practically taste what the Elders wanted.  I was the controller of my own life and I would die before being forced to breed like livestock, forever relying on the mercy of others.  I _refused_.

 

"You know me.  As long as I live, I will fight for my claim and I will never allow them take take my brother from me.  I will do whatever it takes to claim my inheritance because I will have to fight for it harder than you **ever** have."

 

Amazingly, Fugaku nodded slowly.  That didn’t mean that I couldn’t see that same, distrustful and incomprehensible glint in his eyes.  He would never really trust me.

 

"You do have my support, Shizuha.  But you cannot cast genjustsu on fellow Konoha-nin.  The current regime is not kind to Uchiha, and if certain people get word of how advanced you already are, you could be taken from us."

 

"You mean Shimura Danzo."

 

Both of them stiffened and Fugaku stared at me, his gaze serious and hard.  I scoffed.

 

"Do you really think I would step foot into the Village proper without knowing that one of the most politically powerful men who lives here hates us?  He's had the ear of the Hokage for years, slowly attempting to eradicate the prestige and respect that comes with our Uchiha blood.  If he got a hold of me, you'd probably find my eyes sewn somewhere into his body."

 

"What."

 

I rolled my eyes.

 

"I’m sure you know that the Sharingan, unlike most other doujutsu, is able to be transplanted into other people at least somewhat successfully.  If the recipient has enough chakra to sustain the eyes, they can use them just as well as an Uchiha can.  Sure, it takes tremendous self-control, and a chakra balance weighted more toward yin than yang to use them to their utmost potential, but someone like that man knows that and maybe more.  Hell, I bet that he’s got a spy or two within the Clan."

 

Hook, line, and sinker.  Timed love wasn’t a bad thing, per se.  You just had to know your limits.

 

No one here was truly alive, after all.

 

And then, the presence that had been concealed by an excessively strong genjutsu was at my neck, burning because I had my chakra pouring out and grasping.  The smell of charring flesh and the sound of shrieking would never leave me because of my Sharingan.  Poor Naoko-san.  I would remember her fondly.

 

"I'm not going to kill her right now, but you know that she's been reporting my progress to both the Elders and Shimura since I met her."  I never even turned to look at her, confident in my ability to hold a non-active shinobi with only one arm.

 

What.  Was.  That.  Noise.

 

Like drowning, but worse.  So much worse, and I could feel Naoko-san's chakra fading from behind me, I spun and turned, Mikoto, what did you do, your eyes are-

 

Mangekyo Sharingan.

 

A kunai hung in her hand, dripping blood onto the floor, her other arm holding the body.  No, not the body, Naoko-san was still breathing but fading before my eyes, her chakra going out like a dying campfire.  Her eyes were black and she was smiling, her hands and wrists charred black and still smoking, her neck pouring blood down and getting all over Mikoto's apron, and-

 

"I'm free".  Her chakra was like dying embers now, almost nothing, her words more gurgled than anything.  Mikoto was crying red tears.

 

Holy shit.

 

0-0-0-0

 

Naoko-san had been one of Mikoto's best friends growing up before disappearing into Black Ops shortly after making chunin at 10.  Mikoto had jumped to give her a place within our household a decade later, even if her friend was vastly changed.  She felt she owed it to their years of friendship.

 

We held a small funeral at Fugaku's request, and did not inform any others than the census office and the official clan records, simply listing natural causes as the cause of death and Classified under Fugaku's order for the sources that needed to know more.  This apparently was used by other Clans—mainly the Hyuuga—quite often.  Even the Hokage couldn't pry too deeply into Clan matters.

 

The sun was hidden behind the dense trees of our garden.  Mikoto placed the seal that held Naoko-san's body in the grass.  Fugaku read the eulogy and incantations, absolved her of guilt, and Mikoto set the scroll alight.

 

We burned our bodies because the Sharingan could survive longer than us, ripe for extraction.  If we had the time and means for fanfare, we burned them on a pyre.  In war time, we sealed up our dead in scrolls and burned them that way.

 

Mikoto set the ashes into a small urn, and left it under a shady spot at the back of the yard where we'd made a shrine already.  Naoko-san's picture was taken from her Shinobi I.D, and showed a bright-eyed 10 year old chunin.

 

After the short but solemn ceremony, I slipped back into the house, filled my bag with food and clothing as well as my homework, and began walking to the Academy.  I still needed to graduate in 2 months, after all.

 

"Obito-niisan!"

 

He froze, paling under those ridiculous goggles as he struggled with an armload of groceries and his school bag.  I laughed, and sent out a specific chakra flare.

 

"You didn't think you'd seen the last of me, did you?" I asked could, poking his shoulder.  He flinched with his whole body, stiffening from the taut line of his shoulders to his locked knees.  Poor Obito.  If I turned on my Sharingan, I was sure I would have seen the hairs on the back of his neck standing up, too.

 

I swung his bag onto my shoulder, hiding a wince as it pressed into a healing bruise, and linked my arm into his now free one.  

 

"You really did me a solid last night, Obito-niisan!  You know what that means?"

 

He looked down at the ground, though his head was angled toward mine.

 

"What does it mean?" he replied softly, though without stuttering.  Progress!

 

"You're now one of my Clan Allies!  You should be happy!  I only have one other Clan Ally and-" I turned toward the nearest alley, dragging Obito with me to meet a tiny, panting figure, "Here he is!  This is Shisui-kun, Obito.  Shisui-kun, this guy is Obito-niisan.  Treat him nice, yeah?  He's a Clan Ally just like you!"

 

Obito took a break from being terrified of me to eye the short, corn-rowed toddler dubiously while Shisui did the same, staring with unabashed disdain at Obito's hideous goggles.  What a good student!

 

"I know his goggles are hideously unattractive, but he's still a good, useful guy.  Maybe if you two talk later, you can become even better!  For now though, Shisui-kun, you've got to deliver these groceries to-"

 

I looked at Obito's expectantly.

 

"Apartment building 27 in the 4rth Ward of the East Sector.  Room 18C," he mumbled, retreating back into himself at my smile.

 

"Good boy.  Go away now, Shisui-kun!  You have training at 9!" He nodded determinedly, grabbed the groceries, and took off at a run on his tiny legs.

 

We walked to the Academy the rest of the way like that, arms linked, me chattering away while Obito slowly but surely calmed down just a tiny bit.  I let go of him at the entrance.

 

"See you at lunch!" I promised, as I strode into the Academy building with purpose.  I had some kids to influence. What?  It wasn't like I had squandered my days without my Sharingan focusing on the extreme rage and betrayal of having a part of my body taken away from me as well as the increasingly crippling physical torture.  It was training of its own sort, and I still needed to find teammates I wouldn't despise.  

 

"Good morning, Aiko-chan!" I chirped, sitting next to a well-dressed girl with shiny, chestnut-colored hair.  She smiled at me, and it was at least halfway genuine.

 

"Hi, Shizuha-sama!" Her voice was even appropriately enthusiastic and preppy, even if she didn't actually like me all that much.  Well.  It was to be expected, I had literally talked to her less than 5 times, but it meant she was able to play the game at least a little bit, which meant she wasn't stupid, and I loved surrounding myself with people who weren't idiots.  Smart people were very useful, especially when they were smart in ways that I wasn't.

 

She wasn't going to be put onto my team—her chakra control was good, she was pleasant, well-mannered, and would likely grow up pretty, so she would be put onto a team that capitalized on those strengths—but her father was a wholesaler of cosmetics and other chemicals.  Due to the war, the beauty industry in general had been put on hold and the various manufacturing sites we had were converted for military purposes.  This meant that getting a hold of some goddamn lipstick was almost impossible.

 

I had my own priorities, goddamnit.  My life couldn't just be dedicated to getting my clan and fixing up my life to be exactly as I wanted it.  I also needed—or would need in the future, at least—some blinding highlight and nude lipstick.

 

Plus, Aiko-chan was very approachable, and made a good secondhand.  I helped her with her less than stellar areas (mostly by giving her light chakra exercises and calorie dense food) and she walked around with me after class, inviting a rotating group of people so that I could get to know them better in a small setting.  I did marginally better in small settings than large groups in my first life, which seemed to have carried over.

 

Smoothing things over a bit with Mikoto seemed to help in some ways, though.  Aiko-chan cooed over my carefully filed, teal-colored nails.  I could totally slice through someone’s veins with my bare hands, and that made the day a little easier to bare.  Shinobi-grade enamel was _awesome_.

 

The only bad thing about Aiko-chan was that I couldn't talk about Obito much with her, or any other Uchiha for that matter.  She could forget whatever nastiness she'd heard about me as long as I didn't have him groveling and/or begging for mercy.

 

I went to the bathroom to fix my Henge, making sure the nasty, yellowed bruises were covered while fixing my edges and subtly fixing my smile.  I frowned at the feel of the flyaways; I needed to make sure Shisui fixed my hair for me after class.

 

I look like an Uchiha.  Regal.  Respectable.  Stoic.  Noble.  My Sharingan spun behind the Henge.

 

I am Uchiha Shizuha.  You respect me.  You want to be me.  You like me.  You don't want to bother me.  You think highly of me.  I am a credit to my Clan and Village.  My Sharingan made these statements fact to anyone who looked into my eyes.  Not a real heavy genjustu—mere suggestions.

 

I made sure the Henge was firmly in place and returned back to class.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> filler, OCs, im transparent as always but just wait because some crazy shit is gonna happen

Participate in the trust exercises, they said. It'll help establish camaraderie and building bonds, they said. Daisuke-sensei could literally go fuck himself. I only tolerated him because he was pretty and strong.

But. Once I said something, I had to do it. He had witnesses. And if I couldn't even try to follow the orders of a commanding officer for something as small and inconsequential as a stupid bonding activity, how could I ever be trusted to carry out the heinous commands of war? He'd trapped me, the wily bastard.

"If I can't trust you to catch me now, how could I trust you to have my back in a real life or death situation?" I tried to reason, both with the child I was talking to and myself. I did not trust this child. I would not trust this child even if he caught me before I fell into the nasty, worm and roach ridden mud. Unbidden, the thought of Daisuke-sensei sneering to the Elders came to mind. Little Shizuha-chan couldn't stand to get covered in mud, so she opted-out of an order. How could such a weakling ever be Heir? My jaw clenched, and I stared at the tall boy resolutely.

What was his name--Touka? Tousuke? Toumaru? Tou-something or another--narrowed his amber eyes at me and crossed his arms. What pissed me off a little bit more was that his arms--his everything, really--were way, way bigger than mine.

He was very tall and getting broad already, and to add insult to injury he was literally acting like he couldn't catch me. My body was ninja-fit from years of vigorous training, even if I wasn't thin and willowy like many of the other girls. My form was strong, if compact, but nothing this kid who stood head and shoulders over me with arms as thick as my admittedly still-skinny thighs should have had trouble with.

"This doesn't prove anything! Catching you when you fall when you expect me to be there and I already know what you want me to do doesn't accomplish anything. This is too easy. There's no way this is what Uchiha-sensei and Kamamori-sensei want!"

"If it's really so easy, why won't you just try it?" I reasoned. Baby steps for babies, I reminded myself. He looked like he wanted to protest again. I also wanted to protest. If only I had kept my goddamn mouth shut and my eyes normal...I suppose this was a roundabout way of showing me the consequences of unethical genjutsu use. I would now always have Daisuke-sensei's attention, whether I wanted it or not. I shook my head resolutely. I had made my bed and now I had to lay in it.

"Nope! No protests! I'm going to the top, throwing myself off, and you need to catch me! Or I'll never trust you!"

So I did just that.

Let me tell you how much I fucking hated heights. Whenever I jumped from buildings, I felt like I was dying. Every. Time. This perch? It was barely five feet off the ground and I logically knew that I wouldn't die if I fell. When my back was turned though, it felt like I was at the top of the Empire State Building.

I threw myself backwards. Screaming obscenities and flailing.

Hot, sticky arms caught me, one arm cradling my head, and the other holding me under my knees.

"Oh thank God," I muttered, cautiously opening my eyes. Amber eyes stared back at me, smirking. I lie. Eyes don't smirk, but something in the way the sunlight gleamed in them was mocking me and I hated it.

"I prefer Touma, but kami-sama works too, I guess."

YIKES. That turnabout, what the hell?!

I primly removed myself from his arms, heeding the height to make sure I landed gracefully. Was I used to boys--men--acting this way? Yes. Was I expecting that behavior from a 9-year old?

Actually...I remembered that one cousin of my mine, years younger than me (literally 7 years younger) and many, many uncomfortable moments when he entered the 'kissing cousins' stage the same year he entered the public school system. Yes. I supposed some started earlier than others.

"You know that I'm five, right?"

His tan cheeks flushed a vivid pink. Not red, but a pink tone like sakura blossoms. It was rather silly, and an unfortunate physical response for a shinobi to have. I couldn't relate. My skin only changed colors when I got hit or, as I was sure would occur in due time, when I was PMS-ing and my sebaceous glands had their monthly freak-out.

The boy--Touma--muttered an apology under his breath. No excuses, no blustering, no stupid explaining, just a short, embarrassed and seemingly sincere apology. Ok.

I breathed in. Ok. Ok. I could work with that. I disliked children as a general rule, but being able to easily apologize was a skill most kids didn't have. I could barely do that on most days, especially since being reborn: My old impulses to apologize when socially apprpriate had dissipated with my rebirth.

I smiled a little bit and the pink blush across his cheeks spread down his neck. It clashed quite terribly with his decidedly warm-toned coloring, especially with those amber eyes and street-kid demeanor but I wouldn't fault him for that since I could barely keep my Sharingan from spinning into existence every other minute and I had full control over my chakra compared to the non-existent control he had over where his blood flowed. Plus, it was just a blush. It wasn't like his dick was out or anything. It was still rather unfortunate to have a physical tell like that, but he could probably grow out of it

"I think you're a little bit tolerable. If you want to be on my genin team, I recommend that you develop yourself into a offensive, first attacker type of fighter immediately, if you haven't already. You're tall and big-boned, with a corresponding amount chakra, so you could definitely handle learning and showing off some nature releases."

He blinked and nodded slowly.

"If you say so, Uchiha-san."

"Shizuha-sama," I corrected automatically, eyes wandering onto another likely target. I had only enrolled into the Academy for one reason and I had a job to do.

0-0-0-0

Aiko-chan swapped a sticky, warm and medium toned nude lip gloss for half an hour of individual taijutsu training during lunch. I grimaced at the texture and consistency, but beggars couldn't be choosers. I spent the 30 minutes gently throwing Aiko-chan around the field. It was a lucky thing that ninja children typically bounced before they broke, or she would have ended up with far worse than a few scrapes and bruises. And it wasn't like anything important had been damaged--she'd removed her nicer outerwear and left on the basics to train with me in advance, preventing me from tearing up her nice clothing.

When we finished, my stomach was grumbling and the noon sun was almost intolerably bright. Every non-shaded spot on the ground was practically white from how sunny it was, making me squint. Maybe I needed to invest in sunglasses. I pondered the thought as I sought Obito out, leaving Aiko-chan to put herself back together.

Rin-chan was off with a gaggle of girls looking at someone (good God, that had to be Kakashi) while Obito moodily ravaged an apple. I sat next to him quietly and smiled when he started, flailing and flinging the apple core away as he clumsily looked for a kunai, finding none.

I tried to look innocent as I twirled his kunai around my fingers.

When he took the time to notice it was me, he stopped moving immediately and flung into a bow, though it was not dogeza, which I was grateful for. I waited for him to get back up.

"I'm sorry for trying attack you, Shizuha-sama. I didn't realize it was you, and I never would have done that if I knew you were there."

I waved off the apology. I had another 5 minutes or so for lunch and still a little bit to say.

"You should start practicing a little during the break, Obito-nisan. It doesn't have to be the Academy techniques," because I didn't want to mess up the team configurations by having Obito improve on what he would be graded on too much, "But you could practice your control or expand your chakra pool."

Obito looked very sullen as I talked. I was sure that the Clan had attempted to give him this same talk before, but I was merely an Elder, and I was determined to associate with him. This boy would not shame me. I wouldn't permit it. I narrowed my eyes at him, letting my chakra flare out, willing it not to touch him. His pupils constricted to teeny pinpricks and his face paled immediately. Poor boy. This wasn't even Killing Intent.

I let up on the chakra a bit, shifting my weight to my leg and cocking my hip out, resting as I stood.. It always pained me to let my chakra leak like that. My tenketsu and my skin, my muscles and my cells, they all protested quite efficiently when I pulled that particular stunt.

"You're an Uchiha, and you have the potential to unlock the Sharingan one day. In all likelihood, when you learn how horrid conditions are outside the village walls, you'll quickly develop the doujutsu and find yourself with a pair of parasitic, chakra-draining monsters attached to your skull. Your Sharingan will take an immense amount of chakra to function, and since you were born an Uchiha, you've inherited the chakra coils necessary to power them, but you'll never manage to develop those unless you train." I heard a bell, the bell to return back to class, and nodded toward the sound.

"You don't have much time left, Obito-nisan."

And taking my own advice, I shunshined back to the Academy, taking a detour to vomit bile into a toilet. Shunshin was hard, punishing training. It provided a better outlet for my chakra to exit my body however, and I would rather throw up and feel faint then slowly roast from the inside out during the afternoon lecture.

Sitting through the Academy lessons was a trial on its own however, and not just because it was boring. Before my rebirth, I'd been perfectly able to slip into immersive daydreams at will during boring lessons. Unfortunately, I'd also slipped into those same daydreams accidentally, though more often, it was simple moments of blankness and utter inattention. I would lose whole hours, sometimes entire school days mentally adrift and not really present, to the point that quite a few of my classmates suspected I was on various illicit drugs, especially since other days, I would be hyperfocused and task-oriented, excessively jittery to boot.

It was a problem because the that tendency had followed me. Only now, instead of getting to daydream about attractive men and badass zombie apocalypses and possibly becoming either a madam or escort or galactic gangster, my mind liked to zoom in, crystal clear, on the various bad things I'd seen and felt so far in this life since developing my Sharingan.

The sound of someone drowning in their own blood was constant and I hated it. As soon as I heard--remembered really--that wretched noise, I saw the smoking, charred hands, smelled burned meat, watched the life fly out of flat, black eyes, fading from grateful to empty in an instant. Naoko-san was calling me inside for food, putting extra vitamins and supplements in my water instead of poisoning me. Correcting my calligraphy until it was worth of being placed in the Archives and not pushing me to talk. Helping me develop, cleaning the blood and sweat and vomit from my floors and bedding when I was too beaten to do it myself. Having her kill-switch activated and getting her throat slit by her childhood friend.

I burned and burned and burned and remembered.

Sensei's voice washed over me, overtaking the overlapping memories in my head, a monotone that made me escape to gaze at the dustmotes in the air, counting each one as they gently floated by through the sunlight pouring in from the open windows. Five more weeks of this. Only five more weeks.

0-0-0-0

"Uchiha Shizuha and Yamaguchi Ichi. Step forward."

Spars with these children were mostly worthless.

Yamaguchi sneered at me. His face had the beginnings of his Clan's ridiculous tattoos, evergreen diamonds stamped daintily across his cheekbones like ugly highlight. Yamaguchi was probably a very, very strong genjutsu type, even if that wasn't what his clan specialized in. He never seemed to take my chakra-enforced suggestions, and thus, felt uncomfortable around me.

"Begin."

Taijutsu only. I came in immediately with a sweeping kick, missing as he was jumping away. I followed him, my jump both faster and stronger, and before he could put his hands up to defend himself, my fist impacted solidly with his nose. He fell to the ground on his back, clutching his gushing nose and groaning. I landed in a crouch above him, frowning and considering.

Yamaguchi was pretty fast, for an Academy brat. I didn't like him. He made me feel strangely uneasy.

I went back to the sidelines without doing the seal of reconciliation.

I did not want Yamaguchi on my team. But I couldn't dismiss him. That speed was incredible, and from what I'd seen of his taijutsu, his strength was disproportionate to the size of his body AND he was able to--most likely subconciously--fight off my low-level but constant genjutsu suggestions.

It made sense that he was that good already. He had been slated to be Rookie of the Year before I entered the Academy. I jerked a bit, feeling like an idiot. That was why he didn't like me. Not just because he didn't listen to the suggestions but because I had supplanted his place. Yamaguchi stood up, refusing Daisuke-sensei's offer to heal his nose, his vivid, teal eyes narrowed as he glared at me.

Yamaguchi was a bit like me, I thought. It didn't have to be a problem, but I needed a team that was cohesive with my personality, especially since I had no control in choosing my jounin-sensei. There was a small chance that I could be sent back to the Academy if I didn't pass, but as the war dragged on, the Village was prone to increasingly drastic measures. I was not interested in a one-on-one apprenticeship. I needed to make connections outside of the Clan to expand my sphere of influence.

The little boy wasn't so bad of a hurtle when I considered my greater goals. But still. I certainly wasn't going to encourage him to alter his training to better suit my needs until the time came. Hopefully, the time would never come. I stiffened at the considering look on Daisuke-sensei's face as he looked between Yamaguchi and I. Sighing, I walked over and half-heartedly completed the seal of reconciliation, but the damage was already done. Daisuke-sensei was a fucking idealistic tattle-tale. There was no way he wasn't going to do everything in his power to get this kid on my team.

Fine. If that came to pass, I would have to deal. I could be reasonable. I could. I just...had very little incentive to behave rationally nowadays.

I couldn't, however, simply rationalize the lingering unease. If he was so obviously skilled, why on Earth was he still in the Academy if his raw skill was so advanced? Was he a year or two younger or something? He didn't seem like it, but I was shit at judging the ages of young children.

It was a problem for another time, most likely. Daisuke-sensei was scheduled to help me train after class today. Until then, though, I would sit through these boring spars, keeping a careful watch for anyone with a particularly good technique. The only fun part about any of it was that the Academy didn't churn out crappy graduates at this point. These kids were not the equivalent of Naruto and Sakura at the start of canon because the Academy promoted extreme and rapid improvement over the preservation of childhood. Ninja wars took more than fresh bodies, after all, even if all genin got a solid two years before they were allowed to accept active missions in war zones. That would put these kids at 11 or so when they would be allowed to do truly dangerous fieldwork.

I had cousins older than that I still didn't trust to not cut their fingers off slicing pieces of bread in my first life, but the longer I spent in this world, the less I cared about that sort of thing. The Uchiha especially were a very traditional clan. There was no real period of adolescence within the Clan, though it was rather different within the rest of the village. Children trained until they could perform the Clan Jutsu, proving they were adults worthy of wearing the high collar shirt with our Clan crest. It didn't matter then, that we could be sent off to die at 10 or 11 or younger, since most of us left the Academy a bit early. No Uchiha worth his or her name would be so shameful as to not clear the one main test that proved adulthood at least before making genin.

No Uchiha save one, of course. Poor Obito.

I needed to rectify that. He obviously had the capacity to become an excellent shinobi but as he was, his training was not yielding very good results. He wasn't actually the Dead Last, as I had always assumed, but...he didn't stick out the way an Uchiha should. I resolved to bring Obito to training with me after class to see how far I could push him. If I could pass off my association with him as a way to bring honor to the Uchiha name by removing one of our few blights, the Elders wouldn't eye my choice of companions too closely.

Of course, before I could go and do what needed to be done, time crawled and I burned with boredom. I could only imagine how slow the days went during canon Naruto, when there wasn't a war raging beyond the safety of the village. I practiced deep breathing, feeling something twitching in my face as I did so, and trying to focus on Daisuke-sensei. His form was hazy and vague impressions flitted through my mind before I clamped down and examined one closely.

I leaned back in my seat and saw the apparition loom closer and closer to me. Artificial fear made my heart rate speed up and my pulse race. A little voice nudged me to look at the board and listen to the other Sensei. I resisted and the false Daisuke-sensei seemed to inch forward.

I took calm, measured breaths, disrupting the tiny, foreign threads of chakra in my brain, cutting off the fear but keeping the illusion.

Daisuke-sensei was very, very pretty, after all.

0-0-0-0

Obito was looking at me very strangely, and not in the usual, unreasonably terrified way, for once. He looked at me as though I'd sprouted horns from my forehead and proclaimed myself a goddess. I tried to ignore him but the staring was ruining my time ogling Daisuke-sensei and his new, man-ish figure. See, I met Daisuke-sensei when he was barely 17. He'd been quite pretty then, with his clear skin and lustrous, raven-wing hair, but more....boyish than I preferred.

It was amazing what puberty could do to a person.

Sensei looked spectacularly uncomfortable.

"You know he's your uncle, right?"

So? I gave Obito an unimpressed look. It wasn't like I was actually his niece or doing anything truly inappropriate. Daisuke-sensei was just...attractive. And not even in a sexual kind of way, either. I was a few years off from puberty still, but I could still deeply appreciate a particularly well-made physical specimen when I saw one.

Daisuke-sensei massaged his temples, but he was used to me. He didn't even spare a glance at Obito as he rocketed towards me so fast that only my Sharingan allowed me to see him at all. I inched to the side, dodging successfully once before I was flung backward, pain in my back as I smacked into a broad tree trunk. I rolled up into a crouch, skittering to the side as I scrambled to avoid a hit that would have sent me flying a good 10 feet away. Like before, the strike sent me sprawling, the ache in my wrist belying a potential sprain.

I breathed out through my nose. The pain didn't matter. The pain was merely a result of a fictional physical construct. The only real thing was me, and by extension, my goals. My eyes opened and chakra surged into my arms and legs, prickling instead of burning as I forcibly established the mental barrier between my physical body and my mind. I blocked Daisuke-sensei as he aimed a kick for my stomach, grabbing his leg and throwing him with enhanced strength that nevertheless didn't allow me to throw him more than a yard away. Sensei was up again before I could make it to his position and within an instant was right in front of me, his fist buried in my solar plexus. All of the air in my body seemed to whoosh out at once, but it was a removed sensation. I brought my fist back and unleashed, but Daisuke-sensei was able to move just enough. I frowned. Sloppy.

I fell to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut.

Daisuke looked down at me, his arms crossed. He gave off a disappointed air. It was probably due to my activated Sharingan.

"I would strongly recommend that you train without the Sharingan, Shizuha-sama."

I rearranged my genjutsu, blinking and making it appear as though I'd willed the pinwheels back into dormancy. As if. Honestly though, while the genjutsu would be enough to fool Obito, who was still watching even though he'd wisely sought cover, I really wasn't sure if it was enough to convince Sensei that I was following his advice.

He sighed and knelt down in front of me, hands glowing a weak green. I held out my wrist and let him work for a few minutes, wondering if I could send my chakra where his was just to see how healing chakra felt from the inside. From the outside, the chakra itself was soft and strangely friendly, though the sensations of sped up healing were unpleasant. Daisuke-sensei wasn't a strong healer, so he only healed what would immediately impede my training and even that took him a long time compared to real, trained medic-nin, at least according to him.

I stood when he finished and bowed. "Again."

And on and on it went until my chakra was gone and I couldn't power my Sharingan even if I wanted too. The training was much harder after that, but would ultimately be more productive. This was how I pushed past my body's limits. This was the only viable path to strength given the timetable I had.

When I couldn't move anymore, I muttered something about training Obito for a while and then I fell asleep.

I woke up maybe 10 minutes later to the distinct sounds of flailing and occasional, cut off shrieks. I smiled to myself. That was exactly what I expected to hear.

Obito was good for a few reasons. See, he had this need to prove himself. To improve, to make people look at him. If I wasn't...myself, the person doing the looking could have been me, but that option clearly wasn't feasible since every time I seemed even slightly displeased, Obito flung himself into dogeza.

You take one person's eyes and everyone treats you like a monster. Sheesh.

I pulled myself up and began running through a solo workout to improve my chakra-less muscles. Chakra was a fantastic enhancer, but if my base strength was higher, my ultimately output would be exponentially more powerful. Tsunade and Sakura could punt people yards away with no chakra. With chakra, they could shatter mountains. That principle applied to everyone, even if I wasn't capable of doing what they did and might not ever be.

As I hunched over, elbows on my knees, gasping for breath with beyond tired muscles, my mind went away. Back home. Old leather seats covered in dog hair after a day of my pets lazing around, the scent of lavender Fabuloso permeating in the heat from a hot summer's day, my brother running around with neon Nerf guns screaming "Hold your fire!" at the top of his lungs. My baby brother. My poor baby.

I shook my head sluggishly and forced that memory into a box in my head.

I couldn't think of him. No. I could. Just...not that way. My baby brother with the sweet baby smell was Itachi-chan, who was at home right now, probably peering around with his big, dark eyes as either my clone or Mikoto's took care of him. It wasn't the best way to take care of a child but the war had taken a turn for the worse again and the Council had began requesting that all inactive Jounin rejoin the effort. Even Fugaku was gone more often than not nowadays.

Itachi was another issue. The Elders needed to be eliminated entirely within the next...four years or so. I could hide Itachi-chan's latent talent for awhile through the use of clones and delaying his speech and reading by teaching him to be secretively bilingual, even trilingual, but it wouldn't take long for someone to figure out the boy was a prodigy. Well. That was, of course, assuming that this Itachi-chan was in fact the same Itachi-chan as in the anime, and not a baby who was essentially his brother. Itachi seemed like an important enough person that he would be born here too, since fate and destiny were evidently important here, but as long as I lived, my Itachi would never be the same as the original.

With great effort, I forced myself to stand and began the walk home entirely on foot. A part of me urged me to run through another workout but I knew I wouldn't be able to get myself home of I did that and the village proper was not a safe place for a weakened and exhausted Uchiha to be caught unaware.

It was still very light out, thanks to the summer sun. Also hot.

I stuck to the shadows when I could and avoided people when I couldn't. My bright clothing had been shedded and put in my bag far earlier, the same with my various adornments, so I didn't have that going against me, but my sneaking skills--at least, my unaided, unenhanced sneaking skills--left much to be desired.

All of the old ninja I passed, I had to stop and speak with. I got some food though, so that was nice. What wasn't nice was that at least half of it would be poisoned.

I smacked a thought down before it could properly form. I was not going to give the poisoned food to anyone. I was going to throw it away, fullstop.

The thought persisted.

I WAS NOT GOING TO GIVE ANYONE POISONED FOOD. I WAS ABSOLUTELY NOT GOING TO-

Fuck.

I sighed and carried all of the food home. I nicked one of Fugaku's special preservative seals and put the food in stasis.

As long as I didn't give it to Obito, I would be okay. Correction. As long I didn't give it to Obito without warning him first, I would be okay. He could definitely stand to develop both poison tolerance and general awareness, anyway. So could I, probably. I eyed the food, transferred half of it back to my own bag, and dropped the rest of it off with a note to Obito.

The rest of the night I spent vomiting, hallucinating, and seizing while Mikoto monitored my vitals. My chakra, I learned, burned through poison as easily it did food, seals, and my cells. That was a handy discovery indeed.

Mikoto identified the poisons for me while I endured their effects, promising to find the poison-resistance training guide she’d used when she made Jounin. She believed every edge was precious for a shinobi, particularly in these trying times. I could not fault her logic.

It wasn’t such a bad routine to fall into, I could admit. Soon, I was sure I would ache for these days of peace, but for now, all I wanted was to speed ahead, procuring promotions and gaining power.

It would happen, I would die trying. That, I was sure of.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i had to fix ch 5 and 6 since i posted them in the wrong order  
> p.s. i read your comments but i do not respond because i am scared. i do not know why i fear replying to internet strangers when i barely experience social anxiety anymore in in-person interactions, but alas. it is what is is.


	6. Chapter 6

The first time Obito saw the Clan Head's daughter, she was maybe three, and very solemn. She had long, messy braids, and her skin was tanner than anyone Obito knew in the family. With her bright, grey eyes and foreign features, she looked nothing like an Uchiha.

He didn't think anything of her, til later, when he saw her dump something into the Clan's water supply.

Obito wishes he could say he was as surprised as the rest of the Clan when she took the eyes of a challenger, plucked them straight from his skull as he lay down, his screams growing weaker and weaker until there was nothing but stunned, horrified.

When she came to him mere weeks later to chastise his tardiness, Obito wondered what horrible deed he'd done in his last life to deserve that uncaring, cool stare. Somehow, he knew that she could take his life as easy as she'd poisoned everyone before, killing an Elder, and her gaze would never waver.

Up close, Obito's hairs stood up in warning, and his chest seemed to seize, his heart hammering, preparing him to either fight or flee. Standing directly across from her felt indescribable in the worst way possible, like the air around her was infected by her very presence. The feeling only abated when he swore to be on time every day until he graduated.

He never would have thought that she would want him as her escort to the Academy. Obito never in his life would have guessed that she would take a personal interest in his training.

Obito ran through his new weekend morning workout, his muscles burning and his chest heaving.

He fell to his knees. Just as quickly, he was back up and running through the forms.

He could feel those eyes staring at him from afar. Shuddering, he flicked his wrist and embedded a dozen kunai into a tree. Obito winced. They were supposed to land in the target.

"Stop."

Obito froze. His heart clenched within his chest, its beating stilled for a second that stretched on forever. Shizuha-sama had not been next to him a second ago. Now, her small hands were adjusting his weak grip on his kunai.

She patted his arm softly and Obito wanted to cringe. He knew and she knew that those tiny, childish hands could easily break through the skin. They both knew that she could snap his forearm like a twig. But as always, Shizuha-sama ignored what they both knew and left Obito quaking and terrified, wondering when she would get tired of him or when his failures would push her over the edge.

"You know how to throw better than that, Obito-nisan."

Obito nodded resolutely.

Since Shizuha-sama had taken over his apartment the month before, she had followed him more closely and Obito had learned. Shizuha-sama didn't like open terror. She hated hesitation. And when those wide, cold grey eyes stared at him, he felt like a cardboard cut-out, or maybe a painting. Her stares were worse than anything his dismissive classmates could ever throw at him, so much worse than any of the unkind words his clansmen would say in his earshot. Shizuha-sama looked at him like he wasn't real.

He retook his position again and let his kunai fly free.

Grey eyes gleamed eerily, melting back into the shadows of the forest.

Obito threw again and again until his aim was true. When he couldn't throw anymore, he ran through the workout Shizuha-sama had given him once more.

He hoped that the effort was enough. When the hairs on the back of his neck finally lied flat after hours of standing on end, Obito assumed it was safe for him to go home.

Of course, when he got there, he found heaping containers of food.

Obito shuddered, remembering the awfully cryptic warning he'd received from the unholy terror herself. He took out his testing kit and ran through all of it, then set aside the poisoned plates and grudgingly ate unpoisoned food. Of course, the food itself wouldn't be poisoned. Just every single plate, bowl, and his favorite set of chopsticks.

He supposed that this was Shizuha-sama's twisted way of showing kindness. Ever since she had enrolled in the Academy, his awareness had vastly improved. It was rare that any of his classmates got the drop on him anymore and he saw loads of opportunities for pranks and mischief. Obito didn't dare exploit those chances: If there was one thing he had truly come to believe, it was that Shizuha-sama was always watching. He needed to become Hokage, and to do that, he needed to stay alive. Then...maybe, one day...he wouldn't have to fear.

Until then, he would continue doing exactly what he needed to for Shizuha-sama to leave him alive and intact.

0-0-0-0

The weird thing about spending time with Shizuha-sama was that Obito could plainly see that she was kind of nuts while it seemed like no one else could. She used her face and body like an actress, and she wasn't even that good of one most of the time either, at least during the long days they spent at the Academy. To Obito, Shizuha-sama felt like packets of shinobi-grade C4 shoddily covered in simple firework packaging, like the disguise was barely even an afterthought. Sure, they were similar and any idiot could mess around and kill himself with fireworks, but explosives were meant to kill. Obito could always feel that noxious aura around her, the one that would only ebb away after an evening of grueling training with Daisuke-sensei, that drew their classmates to her like flies to rotting meat.

Obito obligingly held out his arm behind a changing curtain, noting the number of fingers she held out as he took the mesh leggings and nodded at a waiting attendant.

"She'll take two." The attendant hurried away to package two pairs of the leggings.

Shizuha-sama was frightening if you knew what she was capable of. What consistently baffled Obito, however, was the reaction of deference and respect to Shizuha, even on days when she wasn't done up in her crazy braids and jewels. She was, on the outside, a sour-faced five-year old, and her knees were often scraped and her hands covered in crusted blood and cuts from over-training. At any given time after school, she was likely to reek of sweat, bile, and blood because she trained like her life depended on it. Bruises were splattered on every visible area of her body, and her eyes were almost always bloody red.

Obito didn't understand why Shizuha-sama needed to waste chakra on her Sharingan while she tried on clothes, but he wasn't dumb enough to ask. He didn't really understand why he needed to be there with her, but again, despite spending a good portion of his life confused, scared, and in pain nowadays, he quite liked living.

Shizuha-sama stepped out from behind the curtain, dressed in solid black. Her beads and earrings were conspicuously absent and her hands were covered in black bandages. Even her Sharingan was oddly dimmed.

Obito stood at attention when she smiled, carelessly paying the attendant and leaving Obito to carry the wrapped package, his heart pounding. It was odd how quickly he became accustomed to fear with Shizuha-sama, how he seemed to know what it was he needed to do to stay safe. They exited the store and Shizuha-sama made a beeline for the training grounds.

An ominous feeling pooled in Obito's gut. There was something wrong and he knew that because Shizuha-sama wouldn't stop smiling, even when they started training.

They went and went and went, and when Obito couldn't go any further, Shizuha told him to work on his flexibility and recovery while she continued blasting balls of fires over a small lake, all while standing on said lake.

It was dark and Obito was drowsy when he saw a cloaked figure attempt to sweep an exhausted-Shizuha-sama off her feet. Obito was scared.

Shizuha-sama just kept smiling.

He tried to get up, but his legs wouldn't work. It wasn't just the soreness and pain from training, either. His body had simply frozen up.

Shizuha-sama didn't need his help. His eyes tracked her every movement, and even though the strange man was getting in lots of hits, Shizuha-sama's afterschool brawls with Daisuke-sensei were significantly worse.

The man was obviously not expecting Shizuha-sama to tire of getting hit. She dropped any pretenses that it was a normal fight, like the man wasn't wearing a leaf-forehead protector. It was dark enough that Obito could just barely see the gleam of a kunai slipping into his guts. He dropped like a puppet with its strings cut.

Shizuha-sama stomped his head until there wasn't a head anymore, cackling the whole time.

Another, less obtrusive figure crept towards Obito and he still felt powerless. He wanted to scream as he began to stand, but he couldn't even do that.

Shizuha-sama's laughter cut off abruptly as she growled audibly, rocketing straight past Obito. He heard horrible wet noises, but kept himself from looking, instead slowly sinking back down to his knees that were once again under his control.

Obito felt like his vision was greying at the edges. Shizuha-sama jumped over him again, this time with a body that she dragged painstakingly. It was so, so much bigger than her, so much so that the sight of the small girl hauling a grown man by a mangled leg was comical, absurd, unbelievable. Obito couldn't help but begin to laugh hysterically even as tears slid down his face, freely mingling with sweat and blood.

The last thing he saw was a giant fireball encompassing the corpses, a disgusting, burning meat smell overwhelming his senses. Then, for better or worse, he slipped into unconsciousness.

0-0-0-0

It ought to have concerned Obito that he woke up in his bed clean and bandaged because Shizuha-sama was curled up next to him, gripping onto him like a vice. The ever-present terror was strangely muted. Shizuha-sama didn't feel so wrong when she was asleep.

Obito frowned as he caught the strange cast to her skin and noticed the labored breathing. Her fingers were freezing. Shizuha-sama looked scared, he realized. That emotion didn't look right on her.

Obito knew that fear made people unpredictable and desperate. He absolutely did not want to be on the receiving end of desperation and more extreme than usual unpredictability from Shizuha-sama.

Obito carefully pried her grasping fingers off his arm. This was just training. He was going to be ok. Shizuha-sama was not going to wake up, those bloody pinwheels spinning dangerously, to grab him back and break him. Obito was-

Free.

He scrambled out of bed, but before leaving his room, he turned to look back at Shizuha-sama. Her skin was almost grey, he realized, not the tan it normally was and her chest was rising and falling rapidly. Obito left the room frowning heavily, making a beeline for his makeshift bookshelf. He quickly located the Academy-standard volume on first-aid, and tried to find any remedy for the strange symptoms Shizuha-sama had.

Obito could practically feel his stomach drop when he found the section on chakra-exhaustion. His heart began hammering as he read the possible outcomes, most of which ended fatally without prompt medical intervention.

Obito ran back to his room, chancing a check of Shizuha-sama's temperature; he didn't have a thermometer, but her skin, not just her fingers, but her arms, her face, everything felt cold. Obito wrapped her in his blanket, and hefted her form over his shoulder. Thankfully, the excess conditioning exercises made the action easier than he would have thought, though he was still sore and exhausted.

Obito ran to the Hospital, passing none of his family members and only a few civilians. The few ninja who were out didn't spare him a second glance.

He couldn't let the Clan Head's daughter die in his apartment, he couldn't let her die when he'd been the last one to see her. He felt like throwing up, his stomach felt like it was being twisted into knots, but he could make it, he was sure--

Obito was exhausted, sick, and scared one moment, and thrown into slumber the next. When he woke up, the sun was out and passing genin and chunin were poking fun at his sorry state, like always, but this time, he felt a flash of utter panic.

Shizuha-sama was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> btw, i'm writing another SI but i think it will just be a little guy compared to this...idk when/if I'll post it, but blackkat has been posting these bitchin demon-shinobi stories and i just felt like, inspired, by the concept of shinobi with the characteristics of various traditional demons.
> 
> ps. ch 5 and 6 were posted in the wrong order. im lowkey going back and trying to fix some stuff since this story has veered WILDLY since i began writing.


	7. mikoto gaiden

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> issa blast to the past.

Mikoto held her head high despite the filthy looks and murmurs. None would dare insult her openly, though they desired to. Oh, she was well aware of the names the great Council of Elders had given the youngest daughter of Itsuka of the Blue Flame and Ren of Bright Blades. Harlot. Usurper. Whore. 

Mikoto was a kunoichi and Uchiha. Kunoichi specifically were taught to weaponize their sex, and shinobi in general were meant to be conniving, to thirst for more than their due. Otherwise, there would be no Hidden Village. It was silly to put such stock into samurai values like honor when shinobi were inherently honorless, mercenaries without a master. They would all be put to the sword and erase at least one of the world's evils should they ever prove intent on actually fulfilling the duties that came with those foreign values they now sought to implement. 

Mikoto was a shinobi of the classic variety, not one of these soft soldiers made from this new era, and mere name-calling would never faze her, not the way this council wanted it to. If they had their way, her line would be eradicated, to the last infant, but save for the one in her belly, there were none left. It was no coincidence that Great Aunt Shizuka's death had not seen a replacement on the council for the dwindling matrilineal branches of the clan. These old men would have better luck attempting to extinguish an oil fire with water than convince Mikoto to purge her body of the life that was, somehow, developing and thriving despite the fact that she was an active Jounin and had never once had a menstrual cycle, this life that had stuck to her womb even though she had thought her bloodline cursed.

Her body was still passably lean despite the fact that her due date was a mere 4 months away, though she was constantly suffering some sort of minor malady, which was common enough for all active shinobi who'd live to serve more than a decade, much less one who'd been on the field for nearly two years straight. Pregnancy was unpleasant, but not as unpleasant as poisoning, or stab wounds, or concussions or forging on months-long campaigns without break no matter how battered and broken her body became. Her chakra reserves had swelled enormously, the fetus inside of her already so strong that each beat of its heart expelled chakra back into Mikoto, a constant give and take of nutrients exchanged for pure energy. Furthermore, this pregnancy had a definite end-date and promised the hope of her line. Young Daisuke was a man, and couldn't pass on the specific traits of the matrilineal branch, of their family, without a fellow matrilineal mother.

Their branch had married closer and closer, but the gene pool was too similar already. A half-sister bred to her brother was an abomination morally, even as kunoichi, and more importantly, Mikoto wouldn't ever deign to create a child only to consign it to a slow, painful death via the wretched withering disease that had left Otou-sama to drown in his own blood so many years ago. But this child, with her blood, and Fugaku's, could promise a marriage contract and more children. Daisuke was only her half-brother, and with time, they and their children could restore their family.

"Mikoto-chan. Surely you see the discord your condition is causing? You are a shinobi of the Uchiha clan, noble and true. You must admit it would be easier to extinguish this flame before the whole of the clan ignites." Councilman Obura was discerning but dismissive. Young Jounin girls were quite common within the Clan, after all, but that these Elders thought so lowly of her rankled. Mikoto had tasted the blood of 100 enemies on her last campaign alone, had dragged her platoon out of the shinigami's greedy grasp, and yet they expected her to fall into line without a fight.

It didn't seem to matter how fierce a kunoichi was on the battlefield, to these patrilineal Uchiha. They expected their women to fight when told to preserve the Clan's reputation and to enter marriage contracts to men they barely knew for the express but often fruitless purpose of creating as many sons as possible. Mikoto was no broodmare, no incautious youth who'd allowed her passions to overtake her sense of responsibility. The Clan may have owned her eyes, but they did not own her soul.

If they wanted her to cede control over her own body, they would have to fight for the right. And Mikoto was one hell of an opponent to defeat, as Kumo, Kiri, Suna, Iwa, and even some treasonous Konoha shinobi could attest to.

"If Amaterasu continues to favor the flame, then the Clan can hardly defy her will. This child is either meant to be or not. I am returning to the battlefield within a day."

Sudden silence, so complete that the dozen Sharingan spinning to life was almost audible. Rage, shame, and humiliation. Of course, it didn't matter that the Clan did not want Mikoto's child. If the Village declared that any potential Uchiha babe was unimportant, however...

The Village did not care about internal Clan power struggles. To show that the future of one Uchiha family, even if it was a family lowly - regarded within the Clan, showed disdain for the whole. The Village knew that Mikoto was pregnant with a child extremely likely to carry one of the most powerful bloodlines in the Elemental nations, given that it survived, and yet, within a mere few hours she would be on the frontlines.

Unacceptable. Or, it would be if the move was not of her own making.

Fugaku was too kind, too naive to protect a life not yet made. Mikoto...she could not honestly claim she loved him at all, but he was, by far, the sweetest, most true of the Uchiha suitable to help her bear children, and that was something she wanted her children to have as well. And evidently, he was quite virile if their first night of intimacy was enough to quicken her womb, an ever-favorable and extraordinary trait when so many of their kin would fight to have even a single successful pregnancy over the course of a relationship. They'd lain together once, and Mikoto was pregnant; Hahaue-sama had sex constantly, had taken an ever expansive aresenal of potions and drew both fertility and virility seals over herself and her partners every day until she conceived, only to repeat the cycle again when her efforts inevitably yielded naught but heartbreak and death.

The Council dismissed her, already speaking in furious whispers and sharp hisses, and Mikoto went to pray in her mother's old house.

0-0-0-0

One of the strangest parts of being pregnant was the knowledge that soon, if all went well, Mikoto would have a living, breathing baby to take care of. Or, more likely, a baby for Fugaku to take care of. The thought of leaving the future of her lineage to Fugaku frightened and disgusted Mikoto in equal measure, though the modern kunoichi in her knew it was an unfair reaction. Fugaku couldn't help being a patrilineal Uchiha anymore than Mikoto could help being the sole woman left among the pure-blooded matrilineal Uchiha. She hoped and prayed to Amaterasu that her child's father could see past his own upbringing, almost as much as she prayed that the Goddess really did favor her child. 

Mikoto had become unfortunately sentimental about this child. It wasn't safe, wasn't correct to become attached before it was even born, but Mikoto could feel her baby move, and she wanted her to live more than anything.

She knew the baby was a girl, and in her quieter moments, she imagined a dark-eyed little one, a changeling who shifted from peach-skinned and light-haired like Fugaku or pale of skin with Mikoto's own features reflected back at her. The only feature that didn't change, no matter how many times she imagined, were her eyes; Mikoto was certain her eyes would prevail, inky black and luminous like her own mother's, and her mother before her.

"Are you thinking about the baby again?"

Mikoto looked up from her slightly distended belly, a faint smile on her face. She scooted to the side slightly and made way for an incoming body to dramatically collapse into as she lifted her bowl, desiring a meal devoid of the meter-long strands of wire Kushina claimed were simply her hair.

"I wonder what she'll look like." Mikoto said simply, neatly tucking some rice away as Kushina practically swooned.

"Knowing Fu-chan, she'll definitely favor you," Kushina proclaimed, her deep purple eyes confident and sincere, but at Mikoto's slight smirk, quickly added on, "Not that he's weak or anything! You're just overwhelmingly strong, and everyone knows it!"

There was no lie there. Fugaku had the potential to be a fearsome soldier like Mikoto or she would have never allowed him into her bed, never would have risked weakness in her babies when there were so many things that would try to destroy them. He just was, at his core, too soft and sweet to kill his enemies with the kind of ruthlessness and efficiency the Village required, but Mikoto could not begrudge him that. She had little issue doing what the Village needed, no matter how heinous, as long as she could protect her precious people. But that had always been the matrilineal Uchiha issue, in the end.

They were the ninja who needed the Shinobi rules of conduct to keep themselves from savagery, who would kill other clans, villages, and cultures to protect their own without hesitation. They were the Shinobi who would kill their weak before they could drag the group down into the Shinigami's ever waiting grasp, and they were the Uchiha who the other Clans looked at and proclaimed living devils. Mikoto would not speculate about the veracity of the old legends, but she could confirm, if only privately, that if she wanted to see her family live another generation, they needed some of that special softness Fugaku had stored away in his heart. The world simply didn't have a spot for more shinobi like her anymore, now that they had leadership that genuinely wanted to bank and eventually stop the bloodshed. Furthermore, the attempts to resurrect the old traits--the unnatural fertility, the inhuman power, the deep, enduring, and most of all, direct connection with their Goddess--they had proven impossible to maintain together. They could maintain power, sure, but did it really matter how powerful a child could be when it had less than a 10% chance of surviving pregnancy and its first year of life?

Did it matter that they were consummate shinobi, the elite among even the Noble Clans, when they so successfully bred the capacity for love and any other non-useful emotion away? The matrilineal Uchiha had destabilized themselves. The fertile few would breed and emphasize the same traits they always did: Greed that was somehow supposed to mystically fall in line when it came time to sacrifice for the Clan, utter ruthlessness that was only supposed to apply to enemies and never their own family unless their own blood happened to have something they wanted, and a convenient excuse to justify any behavior so long as it furthered the will of the Goddess who stopped talking to them after Ancestress' Shikari's daughters were killed.

Then, when these people were put together, inevitably, their shared blood would run like a rushing river through the streets, one bad apple or two or three or four or ten congregating and spreading their rot until everyone else was forced to cut them down, to purge the family tree of such unruly behavior, and every Uchiha knew that if you ripped off a leaf, the whole branch needed pruned. And where did that leave them? Naina and Ninigi had made fifty children together from the strength of Indra's brood of 200 living descendants and untold hundreds or thousands of souls in the Pure World, and they had spread and multiplied a hundred fold, mating with humans, becoming corrupted, and killing one another in an endless cycle even as the Senju gathered strength of their own.

They had all worshiped the Goddess, Holy Amaterasu, and Amaterasu had loved them all because they were her grandchildren, and still the branches whittled down to three lines of descent after Naina and Ninigi rejoined their kin in the heavens. Even Ancestress Shikari had been thwarted, none of her fresh blood lingering in full to save the Clan, and where had that left Mikoto's family?

Nieces breeding with uncles, like Hahaue-sama and Otou-san. First cousins mating with one another, like Hahaue-sama and Cousin Teika, who was younger than Mikoto's oldest sister would have been had she lived. Itsuka had despaired when Mikoto had come into her own because she wasn't fierce enough, and had pretended Daisuke died at birth once he proved willing to go against her will and be as pacifistic as he pleased, but all it meant in Mikoto's mind was that the Goddess had stepped in to ensure her family wouldn't produce malformed beasts that could do nothing but scream and rip out chakra and blood indiscriminately.

She remembered Hahaue-sama's fling with her cousin-brother. Their fathers were identical twin brothers, their mothers full-blooded sisters born from a long-line of first-cousin marriages and of course, so related to their husbands no one could really pick the differences between their spouses and their surviving brothers. The demon's blood ran too thick, both too potent and too diluted, and while it had made Itsuka and Isumo wildly competent in their prime, they thought little of the consequences for their own offspring.

Hahaue-sama had thought it was a blessing to become pregnant so quickly, had glowed with pride as her belly swelled. It hadn't seemed to matter to anyone at the time that the sun was eclipsed every week for months, that winter had fallen weeks earlier than normal. 

Not until their spawn came out with three eyes and tiny little horns growing from its mottled, yellowish green skin, its eyes a vivid purple with the most awful rings, its arms and legs twisted and dark grey like petrified tree roots. It killed Isumo-ojisan when he cut the cord, but Isumo managed to slap a seal on it before he was drained completely of his blood and chakra.

It had shrieked so loudly, and even after its body sizzled and cracked into nothing but dust, it had taken the lives of a dozen of her kin before its spirit, finally appeased, fled back to whence it came.

Mikoto did not like to think about that day overmuch but that had made clear to her what the Goddess's will was, and no matter what Itsuka had suggested toward the end, Mikoto had learned well not to maintain tradition as her matrilineal kin had for so many years. Daisuke would never come to her bed, and their children would breed with each other only if necessary. Hopefully, they could establish their own branches of the family, and maybe, after two or three or four generations, they could come together again to raise the likelihood of producing matrilineal girls, but that time was not now.

Mikoto was considered delicate, demure, a wallflower, by her family. Or, she had been before they died. Mikoto, who gutted her first enemy when she was eight, who made her reputation by cutting her foes down before they even knew she was there by her eleventh birthday. They thought her soft, when hardly any of her fellow-ninja could even stand to look at her for her brutality. All but a select few. 

The issue was, Mikoto knew what she was, and no amount of propaganda could convince her otherwise. Mikoto had loved the battlefield more than her home since her first deployment, and she knew that the burning hunger in her soul for carnage, for utter dominance, was not normal. She didn't care what values her family taught, didn't care what they found acceptable. Her hands itched when she went without weapons practice and her heart dried up when there was no enemy blood to quench her bloodthirst. Mikoto would not do that to her children.

Mikoto knew that, if she were given the choice and if she had the means, she would destroy every last enemy, potential or otherwise, without hesitation. That was why, after all, she was so frequently paired with the current Jinchurriki, her very best friend and most cherished comrade. Kushina glowed with compassion and unflinching honesty and decadent sentiment while Mikoto burned black with contempt and hatred when she was her truest self. Kushina fought to survive, fought so that the Village might live, so that her haphazard but hard-won family would have the chance to thrive. Mikoto...she wanted a legacy. She thrived on the heady power of utter domination, the terror, the devastation left in her wake. Her blood meant something, and she had to show everyone. Like the Uchiha heroines of old, she wanted the peasantry to sing hymns of protection against her spirit when she died, wanted her enemies to shake with terror so deep none would even consider approaching her birth place even hundreds of years after her death. But Kushina...Kushina banked the screams for blood in Mikoto's soul, like the gentle rays of the Goddess on a verdant spring morning.

As a girl, Mikoto had wished Kushina had been born a man so that they might make children together. If she could have a child just like her best friend, if all of her children could freely partake in the lighter pleasures of life fully, without the ever-looming hunger there, forever waiting...

"I want you to be her godmother."

Kushina's excited rambling cut off for a short instant, just long enough for those deep violet eyes to stare into Mikoto's. Slowly, a blinding smile spreads across her face, her eyes sparkling, joyful. Mikoto's Sharingan had activated of their own accord. This moment, this bit of stolen happiness on the battlefield, would be hers forever.

"Of course I'll be her godmother! I'll be her midwife and father too, if you have any room on the birth certificate!"

Mikoto threw back her head and laughed, Kushina following after. In that moment, they were just two girls together on the battlefield, their bond burning bright as the sun.

0-0-0-0

"Orochimaru-sama. I know you aren't an acting medic, but I need an impartial party to proclaim my...condition."

Mikoto sat in full seiza, though her swollen feet, ankles, legs, and thighs protested. Her belly hung over her thighs.

Orochimaru merely raised a perfectly manicured brow, his golden eyes gleaming with obvious interest. "You need your pregnancy proven." He said flatly, as though that was obviously a waste of his time. It wasn't for her sake, but for the sweating but haughty chunin-messenger the Council had sent her after receiving her request to leave the field several weeks early.

Mikoto was maybe a month away from giving birth, and it showed. When this damned messenger had merely huffed and demanded proof that she was indeed expecting after coolly eyeing her obviously distended abdomen which any shinobi with the barest bit of sensing ability could feel was pulsing with chakra with each of her heartbeats, Kushina had needed to talk her down from pulling his entrails out through his throat. Mikoto had done it before, shoving her hand through the esophagus and collapsing everything else, making a nice wide hole for her to pull intestines through, but Kushina would not let her do that to a fellow Konoha ninja.

Instead, she had lead them to Orochimaru, the highest ranking person within five kilometers and promised the shaking shinobi that he could confirm the pregnancy.

He sighed and pinned the sweaty, greying shinobi with a particularly inhuman glare as his hands glowed green with a diagnostic jutsu.

"Jounin Uchiha Mikoto is both pregnant and due to give birth in, oh, fourteen to 21 days. Take her home and get out of my sight," he spat.

All of the superiority in the man's face seemed to vanish and he shook visibly.

"I-I-I can't! The-the Elders--they said--" and here he pulled out a short scroll, which Orochimaru snatched and scanned. The look on his face was positively murderous, but it quickly smoothed into something completely flat, void of feeling. Mikoto felt like her insides had frozen, and even her little girl ceased her constant movements for a moment.

"Leave," he hissed, so smoothly, so inhumanly, like he really was a demon who'd fashioned his body from snakes, like some shinobi whispered. The chunin stumbled away.

Orochimaru turned his gaze to her.

"I am reassigning you to my nearest lab, effective immediately. The platoon is hereby being re-stationed, also effective immediately. You will debrief me on any pre-existing medical conditions, and I will begin to monitor the fetus. Move out."

Mikoto bowed, lightly trembling though she tried to hide it.

The death sentence they'd given her child... Mikoto would never forget it.

But...she would not forget this kindness, either. Never.

She rose to her feet with the same grace that had been drilled into her since she could walk, smooth, silent, and predatory. Her daughter pulsed her chakra, and it seemed to alight a flame within Mikoto's blood.

Kushina was waiting outside, her lips pressed thin and her round face pale. Already, the troops were packing up camp, the mood hurried and subdued. Mikoto garnered more than one pitying look, but even more of rage and fury. 

It was beyond the pale to make a kunoichi in the third trimester fight on the front lines by any standards, everyone knew that. It didn't matter that most of them feared her, that some hated and envied her. Because if it could happen to her, Uchiha Mikoto, who was supposed to have the backing and prestige of a Noble Clan...it could happen to anyone.

"We'll help to pack, and then we move out tonight," Kushina promised, holding her hand tight. Mikoto looked coldly upon the proceedings.

This child was her legacy. Her family's legacy. This child would continue the unbroken chain of mother to daughter from the fabled Uchiha Shikari onward, who had in turn continued the matrilineal legacy from her ancestress Naina no Uchiwa. If Mikoto allowed her line to die out...when she died, how would she ever be able to present herself to Hahaue-sama in the Pure World? Uchiha Itsuka had never suffered failure in her life, and Mikoto didn't see how she would suffer the ultimate failure in her death.

Would she be left to wander aimlessly, an abandoned ghost with none to soothe her? Would she twist into a hannya, forever lost in obsession?

It didn't matter that Mikoto was hale and healthy, young and in her prime. Uchiha babes were fragile, so terribly delicate, and her Clan's infant mortality rates alone had remained high despite the rapid advances in medical care. The matrilineal Uchiha had married and bred closer and closer, become more refined in their strengths but nonviable in their weakness. To get pregnant was difficult for any Uchiha woman. To carry to term even more daunting. To birth a child that lived past three months? Mikoto had chosen Fugaku because they were not cousins, not niece and uncle or aunt and nephew, and in that she had given this baby an advantage no matrilineal child had had in at least two generations. But.

Hahaue-sama had made four living, infant daughters and three sons before Mikoto, and only she had lived to see her first birthday. After her...there'd been so many pregnancies, so many stillbirths, so many little brothers and sisters who'd been hearty and pink, crying and smiling those gummy, baby grins one week and painfully still and pale the next. When Daisuke had lived, Mikoto had not deigned to call him by his personal name until he reached his third birthday, had proven he was strong enough to become personally attached to.

The Village knew how hard it was to birth surviving children for the Uchiha, and by refusing to let her come home...they were consigning Mikoto's daughter to death. As if she sensed her fury, the chakra began to pour into Mikoto with greater fervor. She took time to reign in her emotions.

Mikoto turned and made the walk back to her encampment, ordering her soldiers to begin packing and heading out. She waited until she was alone in the clearing, and brought out an unassuming and dusty little scroll from her pack, her fingers lightly trembling.

Uchiha Itsuka would never suffer failure, never ever. Not when she had offered Mikoto...recourse.

She unfurled the little scroll, unrolling the thin, ancient parchment until it came halfway undone. She bit her finger and let the blood drip onto the paper, which drank in the liquid like a starving animal. Slowly, names began to appear. Mikoto waited until her mother's own stark, rigid script appeared.

She squeezed more blood onto the scroll, directly over her mother's name, and yet again the scroll drank greedily, leaving the paper dry and pale yellow like before. Soon, however, it began to glow a pale gold, and with a puff a smoke, a dark canister appeared.

Mikoto snatched it from the air as soon as she saw it and refurled the scroll, sealing it back into her pack.

It was still light outside, not noon but not yet evening. With her active Sharingan, parsing the contents of the canister was no monumental task.

Mikoto did her best to maintain a steady heart rate, to keep her chakra unruffled and calm. As she stared at the gently bobbing Sharingan eye within the canister, however, she found her task some than slightly difficult.

It was her mother's eye.

Itsuka had elected to light her own funeral pyre, when her time had come. Weak and permanently drained from yet another unsuccessful birth, her face prematurely lined from a life that could be only be defined as solitary, nasty, and brutish, she had sipped at a poison that would ensure her passing was painless and laid her own, signature explosives around her, set to go off on a timer, and ordered everyone away. Even Mikoto. Even Daisuke.

The dusty little scroll had been left in their home, on the mantle in front of Mikoto's father's sword, with a few simple instructions...when all hope is lost...

Something inside of Mikoto knew that this was her only chance for a daughter. This girl was the last shot she had of resurrecting the matrilineal line. It was Mikoto's duty to ensure she lived.

She placed some old bandages down on the ground, and poured the the contents of the canister out onto the cloth. Before the sight of the eye could turn her stomach, she began to chant, the newer hymns of the Uchiha, when veneration of Amaterasu had began to outshine those of her brothers, the strong but arrogant and unmindful Susanoo and treacherous, ungrateful Tsukuyomi. 

Then, she summoned a small fireball, and had to fight to maintain her composure when the flames were not red and bright but black like her hair, like her eyes. The eye was engulfed and chakra began to swirl. It wasn't Mikoto's chakra, though.

No. Kushina and Orochimaru had dimmed their signatures so well Mikoto hadn't felt them, even though Mikoto knew it was impossible to ever fully hide her chakra and the Kyubi's. There was just too much between the two of them, and the Tailed Beast's was too hateful to ever pass as simple nature chakra.

"Mikoto, what are you doing?!" Kushina cried, as something forced her down. Mikoto could feel her chakra being extracted, the same way she could feel a presence more potent, more furious than a sealed Tail Beast coming closer.

Mikoto stared mutely, horrified, as she felt both of their life presences begin to flicker and fade as their chakra was forced out. Orochimaru said nothing but looked grim, his pale, golden gaze burning as he gazed at something Mikoto could not see.

Just as suddenly as it started, the drain stopped.

Over the spot where Mikoto had sacrificed her mother's eye, a golden, translucent woman stood, resplendent in foreign silks and adornments, with bare feet and the longest, wildest hair Mikoto had ever seen. Mikoto bowed, holding her stomach she did so. Her daughter danced in the presence of the Ancestress.

"Your mother should have invoked me ages ago," she rebuked, her voice higher than Mikoto would have thought, sweet and feminine, almost girlish. With her head bowed, Mikoto could only see the approach of her bared, bejeweled feet behind the swishing of her luxurious skirts. Mikoto remained silent.

"Look at me, Uchiha Mikoto," she commanded, and Mikoto raised her head at once.

Her eyes were red, a strange, fey design of the sharingan present instead of tomoe, like a dozen rings enveloped within one another. Her face, her nose, her lips, were wide, all of her features alien to Mikoto, but that was to be expected. 

Ancestress Uchiha Shikari was said to have been birthed by a formless demon and an unwary Uchiha shinobi caught by its curse.

The spirit appraised her, and her gaze came to rest on her stomach. Her eyes narrowed, and then, she threw back her head and laughed.

"That child is going to live, but so, so many are going to die. Prepare yourself." 

And before Mikoto could ask her what that meant, what she needed to prepare herself for, the spirit disbursed, golden particles dissipating like they'd never been there. Only, some seemed to cling to Mikoto, entering her skin, and scarily, into her womb, but nothing seemed to come of it.

Orochimaru approached, stalking forward with perfect, predatory grace. His face was drawn and even paler than normal, like his blood had been completely drained. Then again...knowing what Ancestress Shikari was...maybe it had been.

He gripped her by the shoulders hard and shook her, a crazed light appearing in his unnerving eyes. It wasn't such a bad rebuke as Mikoto was expecting.

"I've never seen anyone successfully drag a soul from the Pure World," he breathed, and Mikoto realized that he was not angry but excited. 

"It's a Clan secret," she murmured, and Orochimaru's inhuman eyes narrowed to slits as though he really were a snake. He released her and stalked away with the same grace, even though Mikoto knew half his blood had been taken, and most of his chakra.

What a monster, she thought, more than slightly admiring and incredibly jealous. She hurried to Kushina, who was shaking badly, and very grey. Even her hair appeared to lay limp, and the red seemed dull. When Mikoto tried to put her arms around her friend, to help her up, Kushina cringed and rolled away.

"Don't touch me. I know what you summoned, and I want no part of it!"

Stunned, Mikoto could only watch as Kushina staggered away on unsteady feet.

0-0-0-0

"Uchiha. According to Uzumaki, you summoned a demon. If you don't think that's going to have consequences, I've clearly been giving you too much credit."

Mikoto held her peace although she wished to rip the serpentine tongue from Orochimaru's mouth. How dare he talk to her Kushina!

He ran instruments over her belly, and Mikoto focused on the grainy, greyscale images that appeared on the little screen, quickly becoming entranced.

By the Goddess. That, it was a baby's head, she could see it as plain as day, and her body was curled tight since she was so big, almost ready to come into the world.

And she was moving. Goddess. Her legacy.

How could Kushina doubt her for bringing her Ancestress to help? How could anyone? This baby was her child, did they simply think Mikoto would meekly accept her death and move along? Grieve, and keep fighting for the Village like every other kunoichi? She was Uchiha Mikoto, not some clanless nobody giving birth to some future street rat, and her daughter--her Uchiha Shizuha--would live, no matter the cost.

"All Uchiha are demons, Orochimaru-sama. That was Ancestress Shikari, the Goddess's will made flesh again, and she would never hurt an Uchiha babe. She's very benign."

Orochimaru hummed in acknowledgement, and maybe it was too much to reveal to an outsider, but Mikoto knew he was not helping her just from the kindness of his heart. This was an exchange.

"She certainly felt rather malevolent when she stole our chakra and our blood," he responded, but unlike Kushina, he didn't seem angry about it. Mikoto relaxed a bit, and watched her child squirm around, able to feel and see the movement directly. It was entrancing.

"Those were just sacrifices, it really wasn't personal. It takes a bit of energy for her to talk to us, and there isn't enough of her family left to power the summoning ritual. If you and Kushina hadn't tried to spy, she would have simply gathered the nature chakra around us to manifest."

Honestly, they were lucky they hadn't died. Shikari had ravaged the Elemental nations and beyond, before her power had been sealed away and her physical body was slain, taking so much energy from her enemies she left nothing behind. Her power had been awe-inspiring, before it was time for the Goddess to call her home.

It would have made Mikoto incredibly sad, if Kushina had died. But, this was her child. Mikoto would make any sacrifice to ensure her legacy continued, even painful ones if it was necessary. She was sure Kushina would see why she had done what she did soon. She had to, she had promised Mikoto she would be Shizuha's godmother, she had to come around.

One weeks later, as they pushed home as quickly as they could, stopping periodically at Mikoto's insistence for Orochimaru to monitor her baby, Mikoto realized that Kushina was not going to come around.

"I told you I want no part of it. I saw that thing go inside you after it took my chakra, and Uzushio knows what blood and chakra thieves beget. Stay away from me, Mikoto," she hissed, drawing away so quickly Mikoto knew she had actually used a shunshin to vanish.

A long strand of bright red hair like wire was all that she left behind. Mikoto didn't see her again.

It didn't matter. It became evident within hours that it was time for Shizuha to come out, and they weren't in the Village. She had to be born in the Village, or she could be taken from Mikoto while she applied for citizenship. Not her child.

The contractions were far apart, and felt as intense as stomach cramps from a minor poisoning. She ran through it, but her chakra was becoming increasingly slippery and hard to control. It was because Shizuha was getting ready to leave, and their chakra was separating.

"Orochimaru, I need to get to the Village!" she cried, when she saw that distinctive curtain of silky black hair up ahead. 

Her Sharingan wouldn't activate and her senses were shot, but Goddess, was he fighting? Were they really under attack? Now?!

Damn it! She was on her own! Mikoto unsealed her old katana and ran as quickly as she could, counting the time between contractions. They weren't quite in the Land of Fire, and it was normally a day's journey on foot, but that was at her normal speed.

She couldn't even take to the trees, and every stray root seemed able to cut through her trained grace and agility, since she couldn't see her feet. Damn it all!

Mikoto tried to cut through an enemy nin, her chakra flaring wildly. He was able to dodge the blow since she was completely unaided by chakra, but it didn't matter. When chakra flared, a golden shroud enveloped her, and when he tried to touch her, he turned to dust. 

Goddess. Mikoto kept running, kept counting the beats between contractions, and went long into the night, after the sun had fallen and the sharp pains were becoming worse and more frequent.

She encountered many enemy shinobi on her way, but it didn't matter. The Goddess was protecting her daughter.

Finally, she came to the border, and met some fellow leaf-nin there. Someone useful came forward, and a deluge of fluid rushed out from between her legs. What opportune timing, she thought between gritted teeth as another contraction began.

Mikoto had never had the misfortune of being stabbed in the cunt with a kunai, but that was akin to the sensation she was feeling at the moment. She wanted to be in the Village yesterday. Better yet, last month.

Her stalk was reduced to a pathetic waddle as she moved toward Namikaze, who stared at her and her chakra shroud with wide eyes. The chakra began to recede, and once it was gone, she roughly grabbed him by the arm.

What a skinny, ugly twig, she thought uncharitably. His hair was garish, his eyes were round like stupid buttons, and he gaped like a dull fish about to be gutted.

"I know you can teleport. Take me to the Village, now," she commanded, almost doubling over as the contraction continued. That was about 60 seconds long, Goddess, and they were barely three minutes apart now. She needed to be in the Village, now!

Namikaze barked out some orders to his soldiers, and before Mikoto knew it, they were in the middle of the hospital, he was passed out, and she was screaming and trying her hardest not to push even though her body was begging her to.

She was put onto a gurney and transported to a room with some med-nin, and soon, she began to push. Each contraction was more awful than the last, fiery, terible pain from the inside like the worst of poisons, like acid had been poured over her womb and her back and her anus and her vagina and then someone had taken a rusty kunai to carve her up like a fat rabbit by a campfire.

She wailed and cried and screamed like she never had before, until finally, sweet, blessed relief came accompanied with a baby's cry. Thank the Goddess.

"Don't do dare cut that cord until I say so, you fool!" she shrieked, when it appeared the idiotic med-nin was going to cut before she was ready. Half of Shizuha's blood was still in there, and anemia and iron deficiency was already a problem for most Uchiha babes. Her killing intent flashed, but the medic just put the clamps within her reach and deposited the baby into her arms.

Mikoto had been stripped of her top at some point and the hospital gown they'd hastily thrown over her head was easy to move. Shizuha--her baby, Goddess, her daughter--rested directly on her chest, still covered in birth filth. Mikoto had never seen anything so beautiful.

Her little nose was a tiny button, her cheeks plump, her lips tiny little rosebuds, all squashed together in anger as she cried out with strong, healthy lungs. Her brow was furrowed and her eyes were still shut as her furious cries echoed through the room.

"Clean her up while I cut the chord," she ordered, reluctant to move her gaze from the darling little girl on her breast. 

"Shouldn't I do that?" a familiar voice asked, and Mikoto's brain was too flooded with hormones to react with anger or surprise. She readied herself to give Shizuha to the closest medic and pinned Fugaku with a piercing look.

"No." She sliced through the clamped cord with little fanfare, and watched closely as the medic wiped Shizuha down fully and swaddled her. Mikoto snatched her baby away as gently as she could when offered, and the medic wisely backed away.

Fugaku could help hold her when it was time to deliver the afterbirth, if it hurt too bad, but the flood of oxytocin was so strong that Mikoto felt like she was floating. 

Her daughter, in her arms at last, and with the protection of a great spirit to boot. The Goddess had finally blessed her family after so many bitter years and heart rending tragedies. 

Fugaku drew closer, and Mikoto held her daughter more tightly. He was welcome to look at her more closely when she passed out, but she was fought her way through the first stages of childbirth. It was time for her to savor the literal fruit of her labor.

“…my father thinks-“

“I could give two fucks what your father thinks,” Mikoto cooed, as Shizuha screamed. What healthy lungs! Mikoto shimmied out of the overlarge, ill-fitting hospital top, and put Shizuha to suck. She latched with no problem, and Mikoto knew she would find ample milk. That had been a nuisance, and an unexpected one at that, for the past several weeks, and Mikoto had been hesitant to ask for the glands to be shut off lest she encounter issues feeding her baby when it was time.

“I want to marry you!”

And then he was far closer than Mikoto preferred, kneeling on both knees and staring up at her with pleading eyes, but his gaze quickly found the tiny, new face of her daughter, as it should. Mikoto didn’t care about anything but this baby. What a silly time to propose!

Something in her bared teeth at the sudden light in Fugaku’s eye, and very carefully. Mikoto summoned killing intent and focused. It could kill unwary, untrained children, but Mikoto was a master at sending her killing intent exactly where she wanted it—which, now, happened to be at her maybe-fiancé. How dare he look at her daughter that way!

“She doesn’t look like you,” he muttered, paling, but otherwise showing no sign of intimidation. The lack of submission both infuriated and, oddly, excited Mikoto.

Shizuha really didn’t favor her. Her skin was, maybe, jaundiced from birth, but then, Mikoto didn’t think it would develop so quickly and the medics surely would have informed her. Already, her skin was darker than Mikoto’s, about as dark as Fugaku’s even though she knew his skin was only that color from time spent training in the sun. She’d seen his pale butt herself.

Shizuha didn’t look like any of Mikoto’s siblings that had been born alive, either. Her hair was wispy, soft, but a dark brown instead of the inky-black of Mikoto’s family, but that she supposed she could blame on Fugaku.

When her daughter finally opened her eyes in the light, she revealed a pale, piercing gaze of pure grey that Mikoto simply could not account for.

Except…she was Goddess-blessed.

Mikoto began frantically digging through her mental records of the old stories, the tales of heroines from eras long gone that every matrilineal Uchiha girl held in her heart when she took to the battlefield. There were many, but only two from the Goddess. Naina of grey eyes, wife of Ninigi, who introduced the techniques of Susanoo and Tsukuyomi and Izanagi and Izanami and of course, Amaterasu, through her union with the Goddess’s own son.

And, grey-eyed Shikari. Now she appeared in a shroud of glowing gold, but when she was still half-flesh…

so, so many are going to die

Goddess, please, not her daughter. Oh, but by Amaterasu, it was Mikoto’s own fault, she had begged and pleaded for her Goddess’s favor, had summoned her Ancestress through her own mother’s eye, but she hadn’t asked for a heaven-sent child, just a blessed one. Goddess damn her naivete!

Naina made fifty children, and all but three died. Shikari’s six youngest daughters had been stolen from the cradle by lonely Izanami and Shikari too left only three of her get behind when she fled the physical realm. And now, Mikoto had made Shizuha. Grey-eyed Shizuha.

What had she done?!

“Is she mine?”

Mikoto stared dully at Fugaku.

“Yes.” What was Mikoto supposed to say? That Shizuha didn’t belong to either of them? That if the Temple still held to the Sun Goddess’s ways alone, her girl would be sent off and raised to breathe combat and take every acolyte to her bed as she pleased, so that her blood could be spread? Mikoto didn’t trust the worshippers of Susanoo and Tsukuyomi. They might pre-emptively send Shizuha back to the divine realm if they knew, if they thought to check, but the knowledge of the matrilineal heroines had been expunged generations ago from the Temple records and enforced with a blood-purge.

No. The Elders had tried to make Mikoto rid herself of Shizuha, the Council had signed her daughter’s death sentence, and Mikoto did not doubt for a second that should she reveal the truth, she would condemn her baby. 

Mikoto refused. It didn’t matter if she was heaven-sent, because Shizuha was not heaven-born, and she wasn’t oni-born, not like Naina and Shikari. Neither of those women had been carried and birthed by mortals. Shizuha was Mikoto’s daughter. No matter what she looked like, no matter whose hand had made her the way she was, Mikoto had carried her in her womb for nine long months, had cut through her enemies high on the bright chakra of her yet-unborn baby. Shizuha was Mikoto’s.

From her wisps of brown hair to her button nose, her dusky skin, her stormy eyes, Shizuha was Mikoto’s girl.

She steeled her spine and glared at Fugaku.

“Bring me Village-issued marriage documents, Uzumaki Kushina, Namikaze Minato, and Orochimaru-sama. We will marry now, and you will help me protect this girl.” Fugaku blinked, and Mikoto could see a heady mix of conflict in his narrowed but hopeful eyes, his slight frown, his furrowed brow. Mikoto stood proud and firm.

“Our girl is destined for strife. I won’t have her taken by some weak, barren couple and raised to be a downtrodden housewife for a smug Main-line man twice her age, and I won’t have her sent untrained to the battlefield before she’s old enough to have seen half a decade of life. Our daughter is going to live, and she is going to be happy,” Mikoto vowed.

Fugaku was silent, but slowly, he softened. And finally, he smiled, a tiny, precious, sweet thing, and when he approached even closer, his scent filling Mikoto’s every inhale, Mikoto did not stop him, not when he stooped to her breast to press a kiss to Shizuha’s crown as she suckled and not when he rose again to chastely kiss her.

“You’ve blessed me, Mikoto. Thank you.”

Despite herself, Mikoto felt her cheeks heat, saw her flush spread to her exposed chest, and a pleasant, warm feeling made its way into her heart, one that made her feel like she was bleeding and being healed at the same time, and Mikoto thought she could get used to that feeling.

They kissed again, gently, and then Fugaku was off. For the first time in a long while, Mikoto was able to rest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> some shit's gonna do down soon lmao


End file.
